


the courage of stars

by daughterofrohan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mild Angst, missing scenes / filling in the blanks, or: 1001 things han solo did not ask for, you know what? maybe moderate angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-03-15 02:51:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daughterofrohan/pseuds/daughterofrohan
Summary: Han Solo signed up for a flight to Alderaan. Instead, he got a near-death experience, a droid carrying the plans for the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, and a stowaway with magic powers.All he knows is that he sure as hell isn't getting paid enough for this.





	1. before you left

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few things:
> 
> 1\. inspired by a re-watch, during which i decided to fill in some holes and my brain refused to let me rest until this was complete  
> 2\. possibly more to come depending on the response to this  
> 3\. if you recognize it, i don't own it. (my sole possession is a beat-up green hybrid bicycle from 1992 named Brego)  
> 4\. this is my first time delving into the star wars universe and i'm extremely nervous about my characterizations. i accept constructive criticism. i do not accept hate.  
> 5\. the thai place down the street doesn't deliver during snowstorms and i'm extremely bitter about it  
> 6\. i wrote this instead of the other fic i'm supposed to be writing (sorry Sarah)  
> 

He waited until Luke had crashed in one of the spare bunks before he approached her, sitting wide-eyed and still in the co-pilot’s seat.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She stared at him blankly, eyes clouded over as if her mind was elsewhere. He took her lack of a negative response as encouragement.

“How’d the princess of a place that doesn’t even allow weapons end up being the poster child for the Rebellion?”

“I suppose it started when they blew up my planet,” she said flatly. She held herself like iron, her voice like steel, but deep in her eyes he noticed the flicker of something that was the closest to real emotion he’d seen from her since they’d found her on the Death Star.

 _Shit._ Of course. Her entire world was gone, and she hadn’t even had time to mourn - they’d been so consumed with getting out of that cursed Imperial space station alive. And now it was all catching up with her, the fact that she’d been forced to watch the destruction of her planet, the fact that the Imps had tortured her to the point that she’d lost track of days. The fact that she’d just narrowly escaped her own execution, only to narrowly escape death in a trash compactor and then climb onto an arguably questionable-looking ship with two strange men and a Wookiee.

Yeah, it had been a long day.

Han wasn’t sure what to say – he had a feeling she’d eschew any form of physical and emotional comfort he tried to offer, and he couldn’t blame her considering what she’d just been through. She had every reason to distrust them.

So instead he tried for practicality. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“I…” she screwed up her face a little bit in concentration and the action made her look even younger, if that was possible. Her gaze drifted down to her hands, folding and unfolding nervously. “I don’t remember.”

“Okay.” He touched her wrist lightly to get her attention and she flinched momentarily at the contact before offering him an apologetic half-smile. The arrested gesture made her look impossibly beautiful and Han had to pause for a moment to collect himself before he remembered what he had been about to say. “Come on. Food.”

He placed a hand on her upper back to guide her out of the room. She didn’t flinch away from his touch this time, but he could feel her shivering slightly under his hand and wondered when she’d last been touched by someone who hadn’t been threatening physical harm. Too long, probably.

Not for the first time, he felt a pang in his chest as he thought about all the poor kid had been through in just one day.

Chewie warbled a soft greeting as they made their way into the kitchen.

Han tilted his head in the princess’s direction. “Gotta get some food into Her Highness, here.”

“Leia,” she said softly.

“Sorry?”

She flushed slightly as he looked at her. “I just meant…call me Leia. Please.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart,” he said easily.

She let out a short, exasperated huff, but Han saw the corners of her mouth quirk upwards in what was almost a smile.

Han grabbed a can of soup from a shelf over the sink and turned it over, inspecting it. “Not much in way of fresh food here, unfortunately, but-”

“It’s fine,” she said quickly. “I’m not that hungry, actually.”

“You need to eat,” Han told her firmly.

Chewie moaned softly, a hand on his partner’s shoulder.

“Yeah pal, I’ll eat too.” Han grinned up at the overprotective Wookiee. “She needs it more than I do.”

Han carried two bowls of soup over to the table, setting one in front of Leia. “Eat,” he ordered.

She obeyed silently, lifting spoonfuls of soup to her lips as she stared blankly ahead. When she was about a third of the way through, however, she froze suddenly, spoon halfway to her mouth.

“Your Worship?” Han waved a hand in front of her face, to no effect. “Princess?” Still nothing.

He tried again, more softly. “Leia.”

She dropped the spoon as if it had burned her and it clattered loudly against the side of the bowl before coming to rest on the table.

Han stood, walking around the table to crouch beside her, fingertips pressing lightly to the inside of her wrist. “Hey.” She shook her head slightly, as if to clear her thoughts, before turning to look at him. “You okay?”

Conflict stirred in her eyes for a moment before she admitted, quietly, “No.”

“Sorry. Yeah. Stupid question. Course you’re not okay.”

Chewie handed him a bottle and Han surreptitiously glanced at the label. Alderaanian ale. Well. He supposed some things had to get worse before they got better. He took a swig from the bottle himself before sliding it over to Leia. She picked it up and tossed her head back, downing half the bottle in one shot. She made a choked noise in the back of her throat when she set it back down and it took Han a moment to realize that she was crying.

“Sorry,” he told her, not quite sure what he was apologizing for.

She shook her head, running a thumb across the label of the bottle. “It’s fine. It…tastes like home.”

It was all catching up with her, he realized. She hadn’t had time to react when they’d been busy running for their lives but now…

He was surprised she was allowing herself to be this vulnerable with him. With Luke…well the kid radiated empathy. But she hadn’t chosen Luke. She’d grown up in the Rebellion, after all. She’d seen the dirty, gritty, messy side of resisting the Empire. Maybe she needed more than just someone to feel sorry for her.

“How long did they have you?” he asked her quietly.

“Long enough.”

“Did they…?” He trailed off, not sure how to ask her what he needed to ask, not sure if he even wanted to know the answer if she did tell him.

“Vader ordered them not to touch me,” she said coldly, and he didn’t miss the venom in her voice when she said Vader’s name. “Wanted me all to himself, I guess. The first day they injected me with this…serum. Then Vader came to talk to me, tried to convince me he was my friend, that I needed to give him the Death Star plans to help the Rebellion. When that didn’t work he…told the serum to hurt me. It felt like my entire body was on fire. I don’t know how long it lasted.”

Han didn’t know what to say. He was no stranger to Imperial torture, of course. He’d seen his fair share when he’d been in the Navy. But he didn’t know if he’d have had the guts to stand there and watch like that bastard Tarkin had. He definitely wouldn’t have had the guts to make her watch as her entire world was blasted apart in front of her eyes.

“You didn’t give them anything.” It wasn’t a question.

Her voice was barely above a whisper as she told him, “It took everything I had.”

“I was in the Imperial Navy,” Han blurted out, unsure why he was telling her this, only that she’d been vulnerable with him, and he felt that maybe he owed her this much. “Fought for them, for a while. Killed for them, even. But when I saw what they really are…what they really do…I couldn’t…well, I…”

She didn’t answer, just stared at the bottle in front of her, fingers peeling at the label.

“You should sleep.”

She shook her head minutely.

“Come on.” He took her hand in his own and, despite her earlier resistance, she let herself be pulled to her feet. Her fingers tightened around his once she was standing so he let her hold on, trying not to let his surprise show on his face as he led her down the hall, pausing to grab a stack of spare blankets out of a cupboard on the way.

Han shouldered open the door of the room next to Luke’s and dropped the blankets on the bottom bunk. “I’m just down the hall if you need me,” he told her, tilting his head in the direction of his bunk.

Leia, however, was staring down at their joined hands with a mixture of curiosity and confusion on her face, as if she couldn’t remember how her fingers had come to be intertwined with his.

“Princess?” he asked her quietly.

She did that little shake of her head again and took a step closer to him.

 _Bad idea,_ Han’s mind screamed at him. _Very bad. We don’t do this. We don’t get attached to sad, lonely girls. No matter how pretty they are_.

His arms, however, betrayed him, coming up to wrap around her and pull her into a hug.

She stiffened momentarily before relaxing into him, her face buried in his shoulder, her arms coming up behind his back. Han wasn’t sure what she needed from him, her moods were mercurial, changing more quickly than he could even think, so instead he just stood there and held her.

She pulled back eventually, ducking her head in an attempt to conceal the tears still lingering in her eyes. It was such a _her_ thing to do, he thought, even though he’d known her for barely a day. Bravery in the face of pain and loss. He wondered if she knew that it was okay to cry when your planet was destroyed. But if she was anything like he expected, she would break down privately and silently, and she’d face tomorrow with the same determined stoicism she’d displayed on the Death Star in the wake of her almost-execution. She was tough, he’d give her that.

“Get some sleep,” he told her, giving her shoulder a brief squeeze.

She stood there for a moment, deliberately not meeting his eyes, before she whispered, “Thank you,” at a point somewhere over his shoulder.

Hand could tell she was feeling uneasy, so he stepped out of the doorway to give her some privacy, pulling the door not quite completely shut behind him.

Chewie warbled softly when Han walked into the cockpit, but Han shook his head. “Sorry pal. We’re dropping them off on Yavin with the rest of the Alliance fleet and then we’re out of here. Can’t afford to get tangled up in something like this.”

 _Too late_ , his mind screamed at him.

Chewie pointed out that Han had gotten himself thrown out of the Imperial Navy for saving his life, and if that didn’t make him a rebel, what did?

“I know, buddy. I know. But someone’s gonna get hurt if we stay. Someone always gets hurt.”

 _Me_ , he thought inwardly.

“We can talk about it when we get to Yavin,” Han said, cutting off any potential reply from Chewie. “I’m going to get some sleep, pal, I’m beat. You should too. Might as well rest while we can.”

Chewie nodded, ruffling Han’s hair with a furry paw, causing him to grin despite the grim mood that had gripped the _Falcon_ for the past day.

* * *

Han woke abruptly, unable to explain how he knew it was still the middle of the night, no more than he could explain how he knew she was awake. Sure enough, when he walked into the cockpit she was sitting there, curled up once again in the co-pilot’s seat with a blanket pulled tightly around her shoulders, staring out into open space.

Han cleared his throat to warn her of his presence before he walked up to stand beside her. “Mind if I sit with you?”

She shook her head wordlessly, still staring out at the stars as if they held the answers to all of her questions. For the second time in so many days, it struck him how impossibly young she was.

 _They grow up fast in the Rebellion_.

Still, the fact that they’d entrusted a _kid_ with the task she’d been given, had willingly sent her on what was for all intents and purposes a suicide mission, knowing full well that she could be captured and subjected to Imperial torture, well. It made him sick.

“It doesn’t look different,” she said, so quietly that he almost missed it.

“What?”

“The…the sky,” she answered, resolutely not looking at him. “It doesn’t look different. I thought that with Alderaan…with…well, I thought maybe it would look different.” She shook her head. “Stupid, really, to think that one little insignificant world could change anything.”

“But it did,” he told her, surprised at his own earnestness. “Thanks to Alderaan, thanks to _you_ , we’re headed towards your rebel base with a way to end this war for good. If that’s not change…”

He trailed off as she looked up at him, sorrow and hope intertwined in the lines of her face. He could tell that she wanted to believe him, wanted to believe that her sacrifice was worth _something_ in the wake of all this destruction. And yet…

“It’s my fault.”

“Don’t…don’t do that.”

“If I had just told them where the base was-”

“Alderaan would still be gone, and a lot more rebels besides.” His voice softened as he told her, “The only monsters here are the Empire.”

She didn’t respond, only returned to staring out at the stars, searching for a hole or a blackness or _something_ that might indicate that somewhere out there, a world was missing.

Finally, in what seemed to be a moment of silent acquiescence, she bowed her head, her eyes downcast. Han was about to leave, thinking she might want to be alone, when she spoke. Whether to him or to the room at large, he wasn’t quite sure.

“The stars don’t even know.”

“You should sleep,” he told her, for the third time that night.

Her lips pressed into a hard line as she turned her head to look at him. “I see it every time I close my eyes. Like it’s the first time.”

“I know,” he said, even though he didn’t, could never imagine what it must be like to lose everything in the blink of an eye. “I know this might not help but…what if you tried to, you know, remember it how it was?”

She considered this for a moment before nodding and then, to Han’s surprise, looking up at him hesitantly. “Can I…can I tell you?”

He tried his best not to look taken aback as he sank to the ground of the cockpit, leaning up against the console behind him, legs stretched out casually. “Sure.”

“It was beautiful,” she began, and Han closed his eyes as her words painted a picture of soaring peaks, calm waters, vivid sunsets. He’d been to Alderaan once before, remembered being in awe over the vast expanses of untouched nature he’d seen in between cities. He wondered what it would have been like to live there, a world untouched by the violence that gripped others so tightly.

He wondered how she reconciled this past with flying thinly veiled diplomatic missions for the Rebellion and sleeping with a blaster under her pillow.

It took Han a few minutes to realize that she’d stopped talking. When he opened his eyes, it was to see that she was fast asleep, her head pillowed on her knee. He considered moving her to a real bed, but didn’t want to wake her, she really did need the sleep. So instead he lifted her blanket, which had fallen to the floor, and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders, covering all of her small form.

 _Six days_ , he thought to himself. Six more days in hyperspace before he could drop the kids on Yavin and hightail it out of there substantially richer than before. If he could get out of there before the Imperials showed up, that is.

He hadn’t wanted to admit it in front of Luke, but he knew she was right about the Imps tracking them. It was the only way to explain the ease of their escape. They had speed on their side; the _Falcon_ was significantly faster than those clunky Imperial Star Destroyers, and _yet_ …

The smartest thing to do would be to dump the kids and the droids on the nearest planet and take off in the opposite direction of the Rebel base. No reward was worth flying into a death trap.

So why hadn’t he done it yet?

He could come up with a myriad of excuses for himself but the answer, plain and simple, was that he cared. Luke was…well…you couldn’t not like Luke. The kid was an idealist, and obnoxiously cheerful to boot, but nothing seemed to faze him. The whole All-Powerful-Mystical-Force thing was a little strange, but overall the kid seemed genuine.

And then there was Leia. Bossy, argumentative, domineering Leia. Leia, who had taken charge of her own hap-hazard rescue. Leia, whose eyes burned with a cold fury every time she said Vader’s name. Leia, who had lost everything, and still found it in herself to comfort a stranger.

Yeah, he didn’t know what he was going to do about her.

As if she could sense him thinking about her, she stirred softly behind him. “Han?”

“Right here,” he called over his shoulder as he double-checked their course on the monitor in front of him for what felt like the hundredth time.

“I fell asleep,” she said in surprise.

“You were tired,” he responded, trying to ignore the way her sleep-roughened voice made him feel. _She’s a kid. She’s a scared, lonely kid. And we decided not to get attached, remember?_

She rubbed at her eyes, sitting up straighter. “Where’s Luke?”

“Kid’s been out like a light for hours now. I’m starting to think he might be dead.”

Leia’s eyes widened in alarm before she saw the joking expression on his face. She rose slowly from her seated position and moved to stand behind him, glancing over his shoulder at the screen he’d been staring at a few moments earlier. “Where are we?”

“Still in hyperspace,” he told her, indicating the _Falcon’_ s blip on the display screen. “Still about six standard days before we make it to the Yavin system. I’ll drop you at your base and hopefully be away again before the Imps can catch up with me.”

“You could stay,” she said quietly.

“And do what?”

“We need good pilots. You could-”

He cut her off quickly. “I’m not a rebel, sweetheart.”

“What are you, then?”

“I believe ‘mercenary’ was the word you used.”

“I don’t understand,” and now the venom was back in her voice, “how you can just…just _walk away_ from all of this?”

“I was never in this for the Rebellion, sweetheart. I’ll get you safely to Yavin like I promised. You get me my reward like _you_ promised. And then we both go our separate ways and you’ll never have to see me again.”

She slammed a hand down on the console in front of him, obstructing his view of the data screen so that he had to turn and look at her. “Have you _ever_ tried caring about anyone besides yourself?”

Han stood, using his height to his advantage as he towered over her. She didn’t back down, he’d give her that. “As a matter of fact, Your Worship, I have. And I realized it’s never worth the trouble.”

She stormed out of the cockpit without a backwards glance.

He was still fuming when Luke joined him in the cockpit, fresh from his full night of sleep and obnoxiously cheerful as usual. “What’s up with Leia?”

Han glared at him, to no effect. “She realized I’m not the person she wants me to be.”

Luke frowned at that. “I don’t think she ever really thought you were a good person.”

Han let out a short laugh. “Thanks, kid. You always know just what to say.”

“You should talk to her.”

“And why the _hell_ would I do that?”

Luke screwed up his face in thought and it struck Han how absurdly similar he and Leia were. Not that there was anything to it, but still. It was weird. “Well, we’re all stuck together for another week still. It would be easier if we were all friends.”

Han laughed again, but there was no humour in it. “Listen to you, kid. _Friends_. Let me give you a little bit of advice. Life is hard. And so that’s what you become. Hard. Remember that when your friends dump you in the dust like garbage.” He sighed, dragging a hand across his face. “I should have ditched you and the Princess on the nearest planet when I had the chance.”

Luke’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Han shook his head, pointing a finger threateningly in Luke’s direction. “I’ll go talk to Her Royal Highness. But don’t expect it to change anything.”

* * *

She was up in the turret when he eventually found her, knees pulled up to her chest as she stared out the window. He wondered if she was still looking for Alderaan.

“I brought tea,” he told her, holding the mug out in front of him.

She glanced warily at his peace offering. “Is it poisoned?”

“After all the trouble I went through to save your life?” He set the tea down beside her before sinking to the ground himself.

She gave the cup another wary glance before looking up at him. “I don’t understand you.”

“Hey.” He picked up the cup and wrapped her hand around it, fully expecting her to swat his hands away but pleasantly surprised when she didn’t. “I’m stuck with you for another week. It’ll be easier if we get along.”

She took a cautious sip of tea, staring at him over the rim of the mug. “Did Luke put you up to this?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

The barest hint of a smile flickered across her face. “He’s hard to say no to, isn’t he?”

“The kid _can_ be pretty persuasive.”

“Must be his Jedi mind powers.” A real smile, this time.

Han rolled his eyes. “I still don’t believe all that junk about an all-powerful Force.”

She tilted her head upwards. “If only I could use the Force the way Luke can. I could have…they never would have…”

“Hey, hey.” He touched her arm lightly, just above the elbow. “Don’t do that. You gotta stop living in the past as some point.”

She smiled at him sadly. “Have you?”

 _No,_ Han thought to himself. _Not yet_.

* * *

As it turned out, escaping death together allowed the three of them (four, if you counted Chewie) to fall into an easy camaraderie. They ate meals together in the _Falcon_ ’s cramped kitchen and took turns doing dishes. Han taught the two of them how to play sabacc and discovered that Leia had a surprisingly good poker face, and Luke couldn’t lie to save his life. He and Leia took turns taking digs at Luke (because it was just so _easy_ , the kid might as well have had a target painted on his back).

Leia began to smile more easily (although more often than never wasn’t exactly hard). Han would, however, see shadows cross her face on occasion, in the moments that she thought he wasn’t looking, and he knew there were wounds that would take a long time to fully heal, if they ever did.

“I was adopted,” she confessed to them one night. “I never knew my birth parents. Maybe they’re still out there, somewhere.”

It was the night before they were set to arrive in the Yavin system and they’d all stayed up late swapping stories. None of them would admit it, but they were reluctant to go to sleep and put an end to their brief time together. As much as he complained about them to Chewie, Han really did enjoy having the company.

“Ben told me my father was a great Jedi warrior before Vader killed him,” Luke said quietly. “I never knew my mother either.”

Emboldened by their quiet confessions, Han cleared his throat. “I…uh…I never knew my parents either. Grew up on the streets. For a while I didn’t even know my own last name.”

It made sense, in a twisted, ironic sort of way, that they’d found each other. Three orphaned kids, all alone in the galaxy, clinging on to the tiniest threads of friendship wherever they found them. _Shit_. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t get attached. Not now, not with his debt to Jabba hanging over his head like a thundercloud.

He’d get the money. He’d pay off Jabba. And then, well, he’d go from there.

* * *

“Base One, this is _Millenium Falcon_ requesting permission to land.”

A pause. And then, “ _Millenium Falcon_ , you are cleared for landing.”

Han punched in the landing coordinates and directed the _Falcon_ towards the designated pad. Good. Everything according to plan.

But, as Han Solo was about to find out, nothing ever went according to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feedback = cocaine (although slightly less addictive)
> 
> come say hi on twitter (@hoboskywalker) and tumblr (@natrasharomanova) so it doesn't feel like i'm just screaming into the void all the time


	2. i couldn't help but ask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia struggles with her feelings about, well, everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -fic & chapter title both taken from [Saturn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzNvk80XY9s) by Sleeping at Last (go listen!)
> 
> -not super plot heavy, i apologize in advance, but i wanted to take the opportunity to get inside leia's head a little bit. hoping to pick up with the plot more in the next couple of chapters (unless people yell at me to stop writing)
> 
> -thank you so much to everyone who took the time to comment on the last chapter/ask for more! @ those of you who didn't want more, you can blame this on everyone who commented
> 
> -still super nervous about my characterizations as this is my first time writing any of these characters in any sort of capacity. i'm trying very hard to make the characterizations as true as possible but recognize that there are many different types of canon accepted in the sw universe and, as such, certain things may appear to be out of character. i'm basing han's past in this story off of the Han Solo trilogy by Ann Crispin (highly recommend this as it's a phenomenal read!).
> 
> -any typos present are the result of my concussion, don't @ me
> 
> -don't ask me how i got a concussion
> 
> -hmu if you want my recipe for grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches, i promise they'll change your life
> 
> -my cat says hi

Leia was definitely not angry. Especially not about the fact that Han, who had all but bailed on the Rebellion only to jump into the fight at the last second, was standing beside Luke, being hailed as a hero. And she _absolutely_ was not angry about the fact that, out of all the able-bodied Alliance members who could have performed the task, they’d chosen _her_ to drape medals around their necks and smile as if nothing in the world was wrong.

_(“People died,” she’d told them, when Command had proposed the idea of a ceremony during one of the strategy meetings she’d attended. “Don’t you think it’s a little wrong for us to celebrate that?”_

_“More people would have died if it weren’t for the bravery of our fighters,” Mon Mothma had told her gently. “We are allowed to take a day’s rest to be grateful that no more of us were lost.”_

_Her tone had left no room for argument, and Leia had conceded defeat.)_

She resolutely did not look at Han as she hung the medal around Luke’s neck. Luke was a hero in his own right. He deserved to be honoured by the Alliance. Han, on the other hand…

Okay, so maybe she was a little angry.

It was the wink that sent her over the edge. Somehow, she turned her barely-contained rage into a smile, conscious of the countless eyes staring at her. She stood, unmoving as Mon and Rieekan proclaimed them heroes of the Rebellion. And then, at the first opportunity, she fled.

The party was strange; rowdy and boisterous as an Alliance celebration was always wont to be, and yet no one could miss the hint of solemnity that hung in the air, covering everything like a thick fog, subduing their cheer just enough that if you stopped to listen, you could hear the silence of the missing voices.

Leia clung to the periphery like a shadow, aware that there might be people looking for her and not quite sure whether or not she wanted to be found. Especially by one specific person.

It was Luke that found her, eventually, and it was Luke that she wanted to talk to, even though she hadn’t known that until he appeared. Luke had lost a friend in the attack, she remembered, a childhood acquaintance from his home on Tatooine. Luke, of all people, could understand the heaviness in her heart as she fought to balance the elation of a victory with the losses they’d suffered.

But when he opened his mouth, it was to tell Leia the exact opposite of what she wanted to hear. “Han’s looking for you.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t ask. But hey,” he sunk to the ground beside her where she was sitting, leaning up against the trunk of the massive tree that she’d been resting against, close enough that their shoulders were touching. “You okay?”

“I should be,” she said, looking to him for confirmation that she should, in fact, be okay. “I mean, we won, right? But…”

“Yeah,” Luke agreed when she trailed off without finishing her thought. “But.”

“It’s not over,” she told him. “The Death Star is gone, but there are still too many of them left. They know where we are.” Her voice was frantic now. “They’ll find us. We’ll have to evacuate, and soon. What are we _doing_?”

“Leia.” Luke’s arm was steady and warm around her shoulders. “Worrying about all of that isn’t your job right now.”

“Worrying about everything is always my job,” she told him.

Luke laughed softly before giving her a quick squeeze and then jumping to his feet, holding out a hand to help her up. “Come on. Let’s go find Han.”

She stiffened. “I’d rather not.”

“ _Le_ -ia,” Luke whined. “Do you two _really_ have to do this again? Come on, why are you mad at him this time?”

“You know why.”

“He saved our lives, Leia,” Luke said quietly. “I could have died up there. _Everyone_ could have died if I hadn’t been able to shoot that thing before it fired.”

“He ran away.”

“He came _back_.”

Leia both loved and hated how Luke was so determined to see the good in everyone. She loved it because he embodied everything they were fighting to restore to the galaxy. She hated it because right now, he was right, and the last thing she wanted to do was admit that.

“Will you come with me? _Please?_ ”

Leia sighed in defeat and allowed Luke to take her hand in his.

Walking through the crowds next to Luke in the wake of the Alliance victory was significantly more overwhelming than Leia had expected. It seemed that everyone they passed wanted to slap Luke on the back and congratulate him on his daring escapade. It seemed to make no difference that Luke hadn’t even met most of the people who now regarded him as a hero. He paid equal attention to everyone who approached him, offering condolences to those who had lost loved ones, and swapping stories with the other pilots, keeping Leia’s hand held tightly in his the whole while so they wouldn’t get separated.

Finally, after what felt like almost an hour, the two of them made it through the throng of well-wishers and found themselves standing in front of the _Falcon_. Han and Chewie were sitting on the steps, sharing a plate of food.

Han clapped Luke on the back as he joined them on the steps. “There he is! You’re a hero, kid!”

Chewie rumbled in agreement, ruffling Luke’s hair with a massive paw, causing Leia to grin despite the frustration that still rankled her. She sank to the ground beside Luke, drawing her knees up to her chest.

“So does this mean you’re staying?” Luke asked Han hopefully.

Han sighed. “It’s a little more complicated than that. You see-”

“Luke!” Han was interrupted by a shout from Wedge Antilles, who was waving him over to a group of pilots standing nearby.

Luke flashed an apologetic glance in Han’s direction but Han just grinned, waving him away. “Enjoy it while it lasts, kid.”

Leia watched wistfully as Luke was enveloped into the embrace of his squadron, all of them talking over each other excitedly as they swapped stories. She wished it could be as easy for her, but unfortunately she wasn’t afforded the luxury of being anonymous in the Resistance. Not that Luke was anonymous by any means, but it was just so _easy_ for him to blend in, in a my-parents-were-never-high-ranking-political-officials kind of way.

Conscious of Han’s eyes on her, Leia stared forward to avoid his gaze, resting her chin on her knee. “So.”

“So,” he echoed.

“About…” she paused, unsure of whether or not this was a conversation she wanted to start. But Luke had sort of started it, in a way. So she took a deep breath, and took the plunge. “About staying.”

“You know you’re not the first girl who’s asked me to join a rebellion,” he told her.

Leia didn’t respond.

“I flew in the battle of Ylesia,” he continued. “Did you know that?”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“They said they’d pay me for it and then they screwed me over. Said the Alliance needed every last credit they could get their hands on because the Empire was planning something ‘big’ or whatever. Guess now I know they weren’t lying about that part, at least.”

She could feel the hot anger boiling in her chest, threatening to spill over. How could he have seen that battle and still not understand?

“I have it on good authority that you were well paid for your heroics,” she told him coldly. “If money is all you care about then I guess there’s nothing left for you here.”

“I guess not,” he retorted.

They sat there in a moment of tense, awkward silence, not looking at each other, neither one of them wanting to be the first one to break. Chewie rumbled something barely audible to Han, but even if Leia could have heard it she wouldn’t have understood. Whatever he said must have had some sort of effect, however, because soon afterwards Han turned to her and said, “If you and Luke want to sleep on the _Falcon_ tonight…”

Leia whipped her head around to look at him, narrowing her eyes. “Thought you couldn’t wait to be rid of us?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. I just didn’t know if they’d hooked the two of you up with a place to stay yet is all. And call me whatever you want but at least I know better than to make a princess sleep outside in the dirt.”

Leia’s hands clenched into fists as she fought to control her anger. She hated having her title thrown in her face like that, as if being a princess was something she’d wanted, something she’d _asked_ for, when the truth was that it wasn’t even something she’d been born into.

But she knew the likes of Han Solo would never understand any of that, so she plastered her best feigned smile across her face as she told him, “Outside in the dirt is probably still cleaner than your ship.”

“Hey!” He pointed a finger at her. “You take that back!”

“Have you _ever_ cleaned it?” Leia countered.

“Why?” Han’s eyes shone mischievously as he flashed her an easy, lopsided grin. “I like her dirty, sweetheart.”

“You’re _impossible_.”

“That’s why you like me.”

“I don’t like you.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart.” He was still smiling at her with that same obnoxious smile and Leia was visited with a brief urge to slap it off of his face. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

She realized, with a pang, that she was going to miss having him around. Even though almost everything he said and did irritated her to no end, Leia was sick of everyone walking on eggshells around her, treating her like she was broken. Han had never treated her like she was broken.

She opened her mouth, and the words tumbled out before she could stop them, for the second time. “You could stay.”

The corners of his mouth dropped as the irritating smile fell from his face. “I don’t stay.”

Part of her wanted to know why. Wanted to know what had happened during the battle of Ylesia that had caused such a great rift between Han and the Alliance. The rebels had sustained heavy losses, she knew that. But something in Han’s voice when he’d mentioned it told her there had to be more to the story than what he’d revealed. _You’re not the first girl who’s asked me to join a rebellion._

Han’s words hung between them like a thick curtain, and so they sat in silence again as the night grew steadily darker around them. Leia thought about leaving – she’d been assigned temporary living quarters at the Yavin base – but her few meager possessions were still on the _Falcon_ and, besides, she’d grown used to having Han and Luke around. As much as the former grated on her nerves.

“I’m turning in,” Han said finally, as Luke drifted over to rejoin them. “You kids coming?”

Wordlessly, Leia followed him onto the _Falcon_ , with Luke trailing behind her.

The three of them didn’t speak, just drifted off to their separate bunks to sleep. Try as she might, however, Leia couldn’t quiet her mind for long enough to drift into unconsciousness. Every time she closed her eyes she’d see a flash. Usually, it was the beam that had blown her planet to pieces, although occasionally it was the blast they’d seen in the sky above them as the Death Star had exploded. _It’s gone_ , she told herself. _It’s safe now. You’re safe._ It didn’t help. No matter how much she tried to remind herself that the Death Star was gone, that it was over, that they’d _won_ , she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very deeply wrong.

Which was how she found herself up in the turret for the second time, a blanket pulled tightly around her shoulders. There was no vast expanse of stars out the window this time, only the remains of the small campfires that had been burning earlier.

When she heard the muted footsteps behind her she realized that _of course_ he would find her up here. Of course.

“Do you ever sleep?”

Leia shook her head. “Not recently.”

He sat down, keeping a safe distance between them. “It’s over,” he said, matter-of-fact-ly, as if that was supposed to make things better. “We won.”

She didn’t miss the ‘we’ that caused her heart to leap into her throat for a reason she couldn’t quite explain. She shook her head again, remembering her earlier conversation with Luke. “This is just the beginning. The Death Star is gone, but the Empire is still out there. They’ll come back for us.”

“So where’s the new base?”

Leia grimaced. “Classified.”

“Cute. So you’re not going to tell me?”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” Was _that_ what she was mad about? The fact that she’d been taking missions for the Alliance since she was seventeen, and yet nobody saw it fit to trust her with the location of the new base? The fact that she’d brought the Alliance the key to destroying the Death Star and she’d been met with nothing but pity while Luke and Han had been hailed as heroes?

 _They saved your life_ , she reminded herself. And it was true. If it weren’t for them, the rumours of her execution would have been true. It lessened the sting a little, but the anger still didn’t fade entirely.

“You’re mad at me,” Han noted. It made her uneasy, the way he could pick up on her emotions like that. It was different with Luke. Luke was comfortable. Luke was safe. Han was…well, she didn’t know what Han was, exactly.

“Not all of us have the freedom to come and go as we choose,” she told him.

“Nobody’s stopping you from leaving.”

“Unfortunately,” and here Leia tried to inject as much venom into her voice as possible, “I was never afforded the luxury of not caring about anyone.”

“Is that why you’re mad at me? Because I don’t _care_? I told you, sweetheart, I tried that. Wasn’t worth it.”

“Why _not_?” she burst out, frustrated. It wasn’t until the words left her lips that she realized that _that_ was what had been bothering her this whole time. But what did she _want_ him to care about exactly? The Alliance? Luke? Her?

Not her. _Definitely_ not her. Right?

Leia shook her head as if the physical motion would help clear her thoughts. When that didn’t work she buried her face in her hands, hating that she couldn’t seem to stop herself from falling to pieces like this.

“Leia.”

Suddenly, she wanted him far away from her. “I’m tired,” she lied, hoping he would heed the tone in her voice and leave her alone.

Instead, his hand closed around her wrist. “Come on.”

She shook him off, roughly. “I think I can find the way on my own, thanks.” She stalked out of the room without a backwards glance, savouring the grim satisfaction of leaving him behind for a change.

Her borrowed bunk was suffocating. The hallways of the _Falcon_ were suffocating. The whole planet was suffocating. In the end, she found herself lying on a thin blanket under the open sky, trying not to think about what Han might say if he were to see her sleeping in the dirt after all.

She could hear his voice in her head. _I know better than to make a princess sleep outside in the dirt._

 _I’m not a princess_ , she thought to herself fiercely. _I’m a rebel_.

And it was true. Maybe she’d been a princess once, in another life on a far away world. But that life was behind her. This was her father’s rebellion, the one he’d tried to hide from her for so long; gritty, dirty, dangerous. But also hopeful.

The stars shone comfortingly overhead, the only solace in a world threatening to suffocate her, and Leia picked the brightest one, holding it in her sights. “Hi Mama,” she whispered. “Hi Papa. I…I don’t know if you can hear me but…I miss you.” The confessions tumbled from her lips one after another. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this on my own. I was tortured by the Empire. A smuggler saved my life and now I’m scared of the way I feel about him.”

How _did_ she feel about him? It was something she’d been refusing to confront, burying it deep and hoping it wouldn’t resurface. But now it was there and she’d said it out loud and there was no use denying it any longer.

She cared about him. That was easy. It wasn’t hard for Leia to care about someone. She cared about Luke, too, but thinking about Luke didn’t give her an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She wanted him to stay. That was easy enough, too. His abilities would make him a phenomenal asset. And even though their stint travelling on the _Falcon_ together had been brief, the three of them had bonded in a way that felt like something more than just a fleeting friendship. She couldn’t help but think that Han being gone would feel, well, wrong.

She wanted him to care about _her_. That was where it got complicated. He liked to talk a big line about not caring about anyone but himself, but she couldn’t help but think that Han was the kind of person who, when he did care, cared very deeply. One only had to look at his relationship with Chewie to know that he cared far more than he let on. And he’d risked his life to save her on the Death Star. No doubt he’d say he did it for the money and nothing more, but still. It was something.

As these competing thoughts fought for dominance in her tired mind, Leia let her eyes fall shut, finally surrendering to the wave of exhaustion that had been threatening to claim her since the battle. For the first time she could remember since her imprisonment on the Death Star, it wasn’t Alderaan that visited her in her dreams.

The sight that greeted her when she awoke was enough to force even the dimmest of spirits to stifle a laugh. At some point during the night, Luke and Han had laid out sleeping mats on either side of her, flanking her as she slept. The protectiveness of the gesture raised a lump at the back of her throat in a way that threatened tears. Leia shook her head in an attempt to keep the tears at bay and felt, rather than heard, Han stir beside her, lifting himself up to rest on his elbows when he realized she was awake.

“You were right,” he told her, the shadow of a smile flickering across his face.

“About what?”

“Ground’s cleaner than my ship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have you ever heard the tragedy of darth plagueis the wise?  
> (i scream into the void, come scream back)
> 
> tumblr: [natrasharomanova.tumblr.com](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter: [@hoboskywalker](https://twitter.com/hoboskywalker)


	3. this exercise of trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit goes down on Ord Mantell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -i wrote this instead of my master's thesis (unless my prof is reading this in which case, the thesis is going great!)  
> -this chapter's title shamelessly stolen from Pluto by Sleeping at Last  
> -shoutout to everyone who's still sticking with me despite my maddeningly inconsistent update schedule (it's not going to get any better so kindly lower your expectations)  
> -any typos are a result of my cat walking across my keyboard while i was trying to write  
> -thank you so so so much to everyone who's left such nice comments so far, i love and appreciate you more than you'll ever know!

“You’re not going to Ord Mantell.”

Leia let out an impatient huff, brushing away a frazzled piece of hair that kept falling into her eyes as she bent over the stack of notes and maps she’d been given. “Funnily enough, Dodonna seems to think I can handle myself.”

“Okay, sweetheart, let me rephrase that. You’re not going to Ord Mantell without me.”

Her eyes flashed with what a smarter man than him might have taken as a warning when she leveled him with her stare. “That’s not up to you.”

“Fine,” he retorted. “I’ll go tell Dodonna, then.”

Han stormed into the command center only to find it empty, with the exception of Dodonna and Mon Mothma. The two of them looked up in surprise. “I want on the Ord Mantell mission,” he blurted out.

“That mission was assigned to Princess Leia.” It always amazed Han, the degree to which Mon Mothma could assert her authority without ever once raising her voice. “As such, she has been given full jurisdiction over who she chooses to accompany her.”

“Right,” Han said awkwardly, eyes shifting from Mothma to Dodonna and back again. “Well…thank you.”

And, like an idiot, he found himself heading back towards Leia and the _Falcon_.

The Rebels were on their third makeshift base in as many months, their scattered contingent hopping unpredictably across the outer rim territories, trying to avoid detection by the numerous Imperial forces that still patrolled the galaxy. The victory on Yavin, as Leia had predicted, had been short lived. Although the Death Star had been destroyed, the Emperor, Vader, and the majority of the Imperial fleet had remained unharmed, much to the disappointment of the Rebel Alliance. The seemingly random (but carefully planned) evacuations had been their compromise as the Alliance had searched for a planet remote and uncharted enough to establish a permanent base from which they would mount their next attack.

Amidst the constant turmoil of moving the base every few weeks, Luke and Leia had been living on the _Falcon_ with Han and Chewie. He had a feeling the two of them appreciated the shred of normalcy it provided. And he really did enjoy having them there. Despite the fact that they frequently irritated him to no end.

Speaking of which.

Han pointed an accusatory finger at Leia. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in charge of the Ord Mantell mission?”

She shrugged with feigned disinterest. “You didn’t ask.”

“Well you could have at least told me before I went to find Dodonna and-”

“And missed watching you make a fool of yourself?” The shadow of a smile broke briefly through her poised demeanor. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Han ignored the jibe. “It’s not safe.”

“What’s not safe?”

“Ord Mantell.”

Leia raised her eyebrows. “And what do you know that I don’t?”

“It’s full of bounty hunters. Dangerous ones. The kind that’ll have you stunned and halfway across the galaxy before you even realize you’re being followed.”

“I’m dead,” Leia pointed out. “It’s difficult to find what you’re not looking for.”

She had a point. The Empire had announced her execution publicly back when she’d been a captive of Vader’s on the Death Star. Although there was a still a bounty on her head, it was unlikely that anyone out there was looking for her.

Him, on the other hand…

No. He didn’t think about that. Or at least, that’s what he’d told himself the first time he’d decided not to leave. And the second, and the third, and the fourth. He was surprised how easy it had been to stay, to keep agreeing to “just one more mission”. Before he knew it, weeks had turned into months, and he was making plans to accompany the Alliance to their permanent base (location still unknown).

“You know, I survived well enough before you showed up.” Leia’s voice snapped him out of his reverie.

“Right. And that’s why you were in an Imperial holding cell when we met?”

“That wasn’t _entirely_ my fault.”

“I saved your life, sweetheart. Don’t you forget it.”

“I haven’t,” she said quietly, all traces of amusement gone from her voice.

The abrupt change in her posture and the way she averted her eyes from his was like a slap in the face to Han, because _of course_ the day that she was tortured and forced to watch her home destroyed before barely escaping execution by the skin of her teeth wasn’t something she was like to forget any time soon.

“I was going to ask you to come with me,” she confessed quietly. “But…”

“But?” he prompted, when it became clear that she wasn’t going to finish her thought.

“But I didn’t want to be the reason you kept staying.” She spoke the words to her feet, so softly that Han had to lean in to hear her.

Oh.

And that was the crux of the matter. Because how did he tell her that she was exactly the reason he kept staying?

Unaware that he was looking at her, Leia continued to stare at the ground, her shoulders hunched over, hands shoved into the pockets of the oversized jacket that dwarfed her small frame. He’d noticed, recently, that she held herself like this whenever she was on the _Falcon_ , as if she was trying to take up as little space as possible. It was a stark contrast to the way she presented herself in command meetings, and it made him wonder if she was scared to take up space in his life, to fully insert herself into a space that was as temporary as any of their rebel bases over the past few months.

But there was more to it than that, he thought. The Leia the Alliance saw was strong, confident, put together. A natural leader. The Leia that he saw when it was just the two of them and Luke was equally strong, but let her guard down in ways that she never would anywhere else. The months that had gone by hadn’t made it any easier for Han to reconcile these multiple versions of her with each other.

That he cared about her was something he’d been forced to admit to himself. In what way was something that he hadn’t allowed himself to think about.

He shook his head, as if the physical action could clear his mind of the thought. “When do we leave?”

“We?”

“Ord Mantell,” he reminded her.

“I thought-”

He knew what she thought. “If you’re going to Ord Mantell, I’m going to Ord Mantell.”

“Han-”

“Don’t start an argument you won’t win, Princess. Besides,” he said, shooting her a smirk, “I’m the best pilot you have. What’s the mission?”

“Intel, mostly. The Alliance has a contact there that has detailed charts of the Anoat system. It’s where we’re thinking of setting up a more…permanent base.”

“Where?”

“That’s what we don’t know yet. Something far enough off the Imperial radar that we’ll be able to go undetected but nothing inhospitable enough that we can’t stay there long term.”

“When do we leave?” he asked her again.

“Day after tomorrow.”

* * *

The day after tomorrow dawned crisp and clear, a soft breeze playing with the treetops as Han double-checked the _Falcon_ ’s thrusters for what felt like the seventeenth time.

Luke, fresh from training and still in his flight suit with his helmet tucked under his arm, showed up to see them off, grinning from ear to ear as he hugged Leia tightly. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“I heard that!” Han called, making his way over to clap Luke on the shoulder. “Stay safe, kid.”

“You too, Han.” Luke lowered his voice slightly as he leaned in to whisper in his friend’s ear, “Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”

Luke had to be a particular brand of optimistic to think that Han, of all people, could stop Leia from doing something stupid.

“All aboard, Your Highness!” he said brightly.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I _told_ you to call me-”

“Leia,” he finished for her.

She let her breath out in an irritated huff as she climbed on board the _Falcon_. “Don’t forget who’s in charge of this mission, hotshot.”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.”

He couldn’t explain why he was in such a good mood, especially considering the practically inevitable doom that they were currently flying towards, despite Leia’s continued insistence that Ord Mantell wasn’t nearly as dangerous as he seemed to think it was. After all, she wasn’t the one with the most experienced bounty hunters in the galaxy out for her head. For a brief moment he entertained the idea that she may have been safer if he _hadn’t_ insisted on accompanying her on this mission, but he quickly dismissed the thought. Despite her years of experience, Leia was rash and unpredictable. Who better to assure her safety than someone equally rash and unpredictable?

The other thing, the thing that he’d only recently admitted to himself, was that he didn’t trust the Alliance to have Leia’s best interests at heart. He knew that if it came down to it, she’d risk her life for the ‘greater good’, or whatever noble way they’d phrase it. He was there to make sure that, whatever else might happen, she got out alive. Because somehow, despite everything he’d tried to tell himself about not getting attached, she’d somehow inserted herself inextricably into his life, and, in doing so, become one of three people in the entire galaxy that he would risk his life for.

It was fine, if he didn’t think about it too much.

Leia was quiet as he mapped out their flight pattern and programmed the coordinates into the hyperdrive, but he was learning that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes she was just quiet.

“So,” he finally said, breaking the silence, because there was something he wanted to ask her and he couldn’t help but feel like it was already too late. “When are you going to tell me where the new base is?”

She didn’t look at him, instead choosing to focus her gaze on the stars speeding by them out the window. Leia was no stranger to hyperspace travel, of course, but she always looked at the stars with equal parts grief and wonder in her eyes. “Why do you want to know?”

“Well, I thought…” he trailed off, uncertainty clouding his thoughts now that he was really about to do this, voice this, out loud.

“You thought?” she prompted quietly.

“I thought that...well, maybe, I could stay.”

_Look at me. Please._

She didn’t.

“What changed your mind?”

“Well…I guess…I guess it’s like you said, isn’t it? We’re all going to be in danger wherever we are. Might as well be in danger together.”

“Han, I-”

“ _And_ ,” he continued, scared of what confession she might be about to make, “someone has to take care of Luke.”

Leia laughed softly in agreement as Han brought them out of hyperspace, throwing a thick, rust-coloured cloak over her shoulders as they watched Ord Mantell materialize in front of them. Han frowned as he looked over at her. She’d discarded her usual outfit for more smuggler-esque clothing so as to go unnoticed, but the thick braids wrapped around her head still made her look too much like _Leia_. “Come here.”

“Han, what-”

He began tugging gently at her braids, loosening some of her hair from its hold. “You look too…Alderaanian.” 

“ _Han_ ,” she protested, trying to shove him away.

“There,” he said with a flourish, stepping back to admire his work. “That’s better.”

Scowling, Leia double-checked the blaster strapped to her thigh before pulling up the hood of her cloak. “ _Try_ not to cause any trouble while I’m in there.”

* * *

In the end, as much as he hated to admit it to himself, it really was Han’s fault that everything went to shit.

Leia met with her contact in a shadowy corner of the room while Han leaned up against the bar, mentally cataloguing all of the exits and potential threats. Which, incidentally, was difficult to do in a room where everyone looked like they could be a potential threat. He watched Leia shake hands with her contact and was about to breathe a sigh of relief, amazed at how easily things had gone after all of his worrying, until a familiar voice stopped him in his tracks.

_“Solo?”_

It felt like ages since he’d seen her, but he’d recognize the voice anywhere. “Drea.”

Drea Renthal. Smuggler. Pirate captain. Friend? He wasn’t quite sure where they stood, after the events on Ylesia, but it seemed like he was about to find out.

“You have some nerve showing your face around here, Solo. Or have you not heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The bounty that Jabba has out for you. _Dead or alive._ ”

“I’m no good to him dead.”

Drea, damn her, actually _smiled_. “Clearly you’re no good to him alive, either.”

 _Shit_. Here he’d been, worried about _Leia_ blowing their cover, and meanwhile he’d been sitting out in the open, undisguised, on a planet crawling with bounty hunters. He may as well have painted a target on his back.

Almost as if he’d overheard their conversation, an armour-clad bounty hunter stepped out of the shadows, blaster pointed squarely at Han’s face.

“Down!” Drea yelled, and Han felt the blast ruffle the top of his hair as she shoved him under the table in front of them.

Chaos erupted around them.

“Get out of here, Solo,” Drea growled through her teeth. “And the next time I see you I’ll kill you myself.”

Han looked up through a sea of blaster fire towards the corner where Leia had been sitting only moments before. It was empty. _Shit_.

He sprinted across the room so quickly that he didn’t even see the body that caused him to trip and narrowly avoid running headfirst into the wall. He glanced back, briefly, and felt his stomach plummet as he recognized a familiar rust-coloured cloak. _Leia_.

“Hey.” He shook her shoulder roughly, trying not to think about how _lifeless_ she looked, sprawled across the floor. “We have to go.”

No answer.

Conscious of the fight still in full swing around them, Han lifted her unconscious body (unconscious, because he wasn’t going to think about the alternative), cradling her to his chest as he dodged another stray blast, shouldering his way through a back door that he’d mercifully noticed earlier. The silence of the streets was a stark contrast to the chaos behind them, and Han tried to appear as inconspicuous as possible, sticking to the shadows as he made his way back to the _Falcon_.

He waited until they were safely back in hyperspace before kneeling to the ground beside Leia’s prone body, desperately feeling at her neck for a pulse. He breathed an audible sign of relief as he felt the soft fluttering under his fingers, cursing himself for being so _stupid_. He’d insisted on accompanying her, convincing himself that she’d be safer with him, and in the end it had been him that had almost gotten her killed.

 _This is why we don’t get attached_ , said the little voice in the back of his mind.

“Shut up,” he told it out loud.

“Han?”

He quickly pulled his fingers back from her neck as her eyes fluttered open. “Welcome back, sweetheart.”

“Where are we?” Leia winced as she tried to sit up, bringing a hand to her ribs. “What _happened?_ ”

Han slipped a hand under her back, gently guiding her into a seated position. “Bar fight. You, uh, got caught in the crossfire.” _It was my fault_ , was what he didn’t tell her.

Leia’s hand shot to her pocket, and she let out a sigh of relief as she pulled out a small data chip. “At least we got what we went in there for.” She winced again as she slowly returned the chip to her pocket, and Han’s hand tightened protectively on her shoulder. “It feels like I got trampled by a herd of banthas.”

“Yeah, a stun blast at close range will do that to you.” He squeezed her shoulder gently. “Sleep it off. We’ve still got another hour or so before we’re back at base.”

He didn’t ask her if she’d rather sleep in a bed than on the floor of the cockpit. Partly because he knew she’d scoff at him, and partly because he wanted to keep an eye on her.

“Han?”

“Yeah, Princess?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but her expression softened almost immediately as she said, “Thanks for saving my life. Again.”

_It’s my fault you needed saving._

_I never should have come with you._

_I was wrong._

Han forced his features into what he hoped looked like a genuine smile. “That’s what I’m here for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i scream into the void, come scream back
> 
> tumblr: [natrasharomanova.tumblr.com](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter: [@hoboskywalker](https://twitter.com/hoboskywalker)


	4. a long time running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, you don't know what you've got until it's (almost) gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -idk if anyone's still reading this but we're coming up on BESPIN which was the part i was the most excited about when i first spawned this idea so if ur not going to yell at me i'll stay here and yell at myself, good day  
> -chapter title shamelessly stolen from The Tragically Hip ([listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7fj2wCJnCo))  
> -my cat didn't help me write this chapter so if it sucks that's why  
> -pls talk to me i thrive off of feedback

She almost hoped he would freeze to death.

Almost.

But he was out there looking for Luke, despite the fact that he’d been told, no, _ordered_ , to stay, and at this point he was Luke’s best hope of getting back to base. _Luke’s only hope_ , was a thought that she didn’t entertain. All it had taken was for 3PO to tell him that nobody knew where Luke was, and he’d headed out into the cold without a backwards glance. Had he done it for himself? For Luke? For _her_? Those were questions she didn’t think she wanted answers to.

There’d been no further discussion about him staying when they’d gotten back from Ord Mantell. He’d spent the following week on edge, and Leia had left him to it, and he’d returned piece by piece over the subsequent weeks of their preparation and departure, and the establishment of the new permanent base on Hoth. Well, hopefully not too permanent. She was starting to forget what it felt like to be warm.

And now, all of a sudden, he was leaving. With no explanation, except for the fact that whatever happened on Ord Mantell had changed his mind. And then he was throwing her feelings in her face, the same feelings she’d been wrestling with for almost a year now, the feelings she’d been suppressing for so long because she knew that, eventually, no matter what he said in the short term, he was leaving.

The poison in his voice when he’d yelled at her in the hallway had almost made her never want to see him again.

Almost.

She stood by the doors, leaning up against the _Falcon_ as Chewie rumbled softly in a comforting tone, patting her shoulder gently. “They’ll be back soon,” she told him, more for her own benefit than for his.

She was worried about Luke, she told herself. She didn’t care about Han. Han was leaving.

_Then why didn’t he?_

She held her breath as they closed the doors, letting out a soft shudder as the loud _clang_ reverberated through her very bones, shutting off the outside world until the morning. Wherever Luke and Han were, they were alone until the morning. And the days on Hoth were deadly at their best.

The crowds began to dissipate as soon as the doors swung shut, everyone going about their nightly routine as if the two most important people in Leia’s life weren’t stuck outside in the harshest conditions in the galaxy. She sank to the ground, arms wrapping around her knees, as she sat staring at the thick metal door that stood between her and her friends. Chewie pulled at her arm, muttering insistently, but she shook her head, unable to tear her eyes away from the door.

“You go sleep,” she told him, because despite her limited understanding of the Wookiee language, she was pretty sure that’s what he was telling her to do. “I’m going to sit here for a while.”

Eventually he gave up, drifting off into the _Falcon_. Leia assumed he’d gone to sleep but he returned a few short moments later with a pile of blankets, draping one gently around her shoulders. She thanked him softly, twisting her fingers into the rough fabric. It smelled faintly of smoke and pine from their night spent under the stars on Yavin and Leia quickly blinked back the tears that threatened to fill her eyes as she inhaled the scent.

Her tired eyes threatened to fall shut, but Leia forced them to remain open, continuing her vigil. She knew she should sleep, knew there was next to no chance of Luke and Han returning in the middle of the night, but she also knew that her anxiety wouldn’t allow her to sleep for long, if at all. So she watched, as night fell around her, until it was so dark that the door was indistinguishable from the rest of the room.

She drifted briefly in and out of consciousness in the early morning, as talk began of sending out a search party. By the time preparations were in full swing and the first pilots were leaving base she could barely keep her eyes open and was hanging onto every word coming through the commlink like it was a lifeline.

“Echo Base, this is Rogue Two. I found them.”

A shout went up from the command station as they heard Senesca’s words, and Leia breathed a sigh of relief, finally letting her eyes fall shut as she leaned her head back against the _Falcon’_ s hull, the anxiety of the past night finally dissipating.

“Solo’s waving him down!”

And then, “Get a team ready, Skywalker needs medical attention stat!”

They were both alive. That was what she focused on.

It felt like another eternity before Zev Senesca landed just outside the doors and a team of medics finally rushed out to meet him with a stretcher. Leia managed to catch a glimpse of Luke as they rushed by her towards the medical bay. His face was bloody, and he had to have a pretty bad case of hypothermia after being out there all night, but the fact that they were rushing him to medical meant that he was _alive_ , and that was something.

Before she could decide whether or not to follow them, Chewie pushed past her with an elated cry, enveloping Han in a tight embrace. As much as she didn’t want to be happy to see him, the rough sound of his laugh sent a jolt of warmth shooting through Leia’s cold body. “I know, I know, pal. It’s okay. Kid’s a little roughed up but we’ll both be fine.”

In her tired daze Leia was conscious of him coming to stand in front of her, conscious of his mouth moving, but none of his words registered in her mind.

She shook her head, as if the physical action would help to clear her thoughts, and looked up to see him staring at her expectantly. “Leia?”

“Sorry, I…what?”

“I asked you if it’s true that you stayed up all night.”

Leia turned to glare at Chewie, who just shrugged, a bemused expression on his face as he looked from her to Han and back again. “So what if I did?”

“You look like shit,” he commented.

“Thanks,” she snapped, lacing her voice with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “You know, you’ve looked better.”

“You should sleep.” He looped an arm around her waist, guiding her towards the _Falcon_.

“But,” she protested, as she made a feeble attempt to push him away, “Luke’s-”

“In medical. We won’t be able to see him for a while anyways so you might as well rest. You’re not doing anyone any favours wearing yourself out like this.”

She nodded, tightening her hold on the blanket that was still wrapped around her shoulders as she conceded defeat and allowed Han to guide her up onto the _Falcon_. “I’m still mad at you,” she mumbled, as she made her way towards the room she’d begun to think of as hers.

Han laughed softly. “Get some sleep, sweetheart. You can yell at me later.”

“Don’t call me that,” she murmured as she drifted into unconsciousness.

* * *

She was willing to be the bigger person, really. Until his comment about their argument in the passage reminded her about the way he’d thrown her feelings in her face like they were garbage.

Using Luke was a low blow, and she knew that, but she’d apologize to him later. She told herself it was worth it to see the look on Han’s face.

And then it was a whirlwind of emergency command meetings and Imperial droids and giving the evacuation order to a room full of pilots in a sleep-deprived haze. And before she knew it, she was trapped in a caved-in passage with the last person in the galaxy she wanted to be stuck with, and the only way out was on his ship.

Right. Well, she supposed that if it was a choice between Han and Vader, she’d take Han.

The events that followed seemed to be a sign that when it appeared that nothing could possibly get worse, they’d really only scraped the tip of the iceberg that was Worse. It was almost comical, she thought, if she could forget about the fact that they were literally running for their lives.

Running for their lives, straight into a field of asteroids.

A field of asteroids that Han was somehow navigating with the ease of someone who’d done this hundreds of times before.

When they were finally safe (for the moment) in a cave located in one of the larger asteroids, Leia’s fists were clenched so tightly that her nails had pierced the skin of her palms. Slowly, she opened her fingers, trying to massage the tension out of her hands as she followed Han and 3PO down to the control panel.

“See what you can do about these valves,” he told her, indicating the panel behind him. “The Professor and I will go see if we can figure out what’s wrong with the hyperdrive.”

Leia nodded, slipping a pair of glasses over her eyes as the two of them continued down the hallway behind her, arguing about the negative power coupling.

She lifted the glasses as she finished welding the valves back together, leaning in closer to inspect her work before reaching up to pull the lever in an attempt to reengage the system.

It stuck.

She was so focused on her struggle with the lever that she didn’t notice Han’s approach until his arms were around her, one hand on either side of hers on the lever. She jerked back as if he’d burned her. The motion caused the rough edge of the lever to dig deeper into one of the slices on her palm and Leia gasped as she pulled her hand back, examining the trickle of blood running across her skin.

And then he was close to her, too close, and she was trapped against the wall and his arms were _still_ around her, blocking her only route of escape. And despite all of her conflicting emotions, she was staring up at his lips, wondering what they would feel like against hers. And then he leaned down and her body leaned up, betraying her, and she didn’t have to wonder anymore.

She froze, tension gripping her entire body as Han’s lips brushed up against hers. They were warm, soft, gentle, everything she didn’t associate with him, and it scared her.

She thought briefly of the kisses she’d received back on Alderaan, always from suitors who had been carefully selected by her parents. Those had been chaste, safe, _nothing_ like this. This was raw and terrifying, and _real_ in a way that made it feel like every inch of her body was on fire.

Han leaned back just slightly, his arms still tight around her waist, a question in his eyes.

It was the same question Leia had been battling for almost a year, ever since he’d inserted himself into her life in a way that had always felt far too permanent from the beginning. It was the same question she’d battled the night after he’d yelled at her on Echo Base and she’d sat through the night, waiting for him to come back even though a small part of her had hoped he wouldn’t. It was the same question that had flickered through her mind briefly in the moments before he’d pressed his lips to hers for the first time.

_How do we turn back from here?_

The answer was that they didn’t. The _how_ of that was a lot more complicated than she wanted to think about right now.

So, this was how it was going to be.

“Okay, hotshot.”

* * *

By the time they’d escaped the Imperial star destroyers for a second time, floating serenely among the garbage, Leia felt like the end of a frayed thread, unraveling as she desperately tried to hold herself together, every nerve in her body rubbed raw.

They were on their way to a not-quite-friend of Han’s, whom he apparently trusted to fix the _Falcon_ ’s hyperdrive, and Leia felt like she was no closer to figuring him out than she’d been a year ago when she’d first set foot on his ship.

“How long until Bespin?” she asked.

Han squinted at the display in front of him. “At our speed, about a standard month. Maybe a little longer.”

A _month_. Her stomach dropped, a wave of nausea rolling over her as she thought about the unspoken tension between them. A day would have been fine. A week would have been fine. But they couldn’t avoid each other for a month. And as much as it scared her, the fact that they finally had to talk about this, she didn’t want to keep avoiding him indefinitely.

“Hey.” Han’s voice snapped her out of her reverie, and she turned to look at him. His eyes held the same question as before, and Leia shivered involuntarily. “Talk to me?”

She sank into the co-pilot’s seat by way of an answer.

“Have you ever…done this before?”

“Been to Bespin?” she asked innocently.

“You know what I mean.”

Slowly, she shook her head, drawing her knees up to her chest as if the action of making herself smaller could protect her from the vulnerability that came with the admission of the fact that, in this area at least, she had no idea what she was doing. She had no doubt that Han had experience, and was acutely conscious of the fact that her experience, or lack thereof, made her woefully inadequate compared to him.

Han, however, nodded, unsurprised, as if that was the answer he’d been expecting her to give. “Is this…something you want?”

Somehow, she managed to keep her voice steady as she told him, “That depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On if you’re still leaving.”

“Jabba’s put a death mark on me,” he said matter-of-fact-ly, as if having people out for his head was simply a fact of life. “Those bounty hunters on Ord Mantell, the bar fight, it was all because of me. And the longer I stay away the more dangerous it gets.”

Leia felt a brief surge of anger. “So you were leaving to…what? To _protect_ me?”

“Everyone around me was in danger. _You_ were in danger. I couldn’t-”

“I’ve been in danger my whole life!” she spat at him. “And everyone thinks they know what’s best for me, everyone keeps trying to protect me, and nobody ever asks me what _I_ want.”

“I’m asking you now,” he replied calmly.

What _did_ she want?

She wanted her parents back. She wanted her world back. She wanted everyone to stop treating her like the homeless, orphan princess of a dead planet.

“I want you to stay.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “Let’s start there.” He moved to stand in front of her, taking her hands in his own and pulling her to her feet, leaning down to capture her lips in his once more. Leia froze momentarily before she remembered that this was all part of this _thing_ that they were doing now.

“You okay?” he asked her, pulling back to study her face.

“Yes!” she said, perhaps a bit more forcefully than she intended. “It’s just going to take some time to get used to.”

“We have time.”

They had nothing _but_ time, it seemed. Han and Chewie took turns piloting the _Falcon_ and continued to tinker with the hyperdrive, while Leia focused the majority of her energy on making contact with the Rebel fleet. As someone who was privy to the knowledge shared in command meetings she was fairly certain where the fleet was headed following the evacuation on Hoth, but as far as they knew, she, Han, and the _Falcon_ were simply missing. She also wanted to make sure they had the possibility of an extraction if the meeting with Han’s not-quite-trustworthy friend turned out to be a complete disaster instead of the partial disaster she was anticipating.

Occasionally, she wondered what her parents would say if they could have seen her travelling through the outer reaches of the galaxy with a smuggler, a Wookiee, and an overly anxious protocol droid.

She still talked to them, occasionally, during stolen moments up in the turret while Han was working on the _Falcon_. “I miss you,” she confessed one night, as she stared out at the stars. “I’m still really not sure how to do this on my own, although…well, I guess I’m not really on my own anymore. There’s this guy, a smuggler, scum, really, but…you’d like him. Well, at least, I hope you would. You’d like Luke, too. He’s-”

“Who are you talking to?”

Leia had been so absorbed in her conversation that she hadn’t heard Han come in. How long had he been standing there? “My parents,” she confessed softly, staring down at her hands.

“Do you think they can hear you?”

She lifted her eyes to the stars once more. “I hope so.”

Han sank to the ground beside her, draping an arm across her shoulders, and she leaned into him, still surprised at how _easy_ it all felt.

“I need to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About after Bespin.”

“I managed to get in touch with Rieekan today. He said the fleet is-”

“I’m taking you back to the fleet,” Han interrupted. “But then I’m going to get Jabba off my back. I can’t keep taking chances, not when it’s going to put you in danger too.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“No,” he said firmly, “you’re not.”

“I thought we decided that you were staying.” She hoped he could hear the betrayal that coloured her voice.

“The longer I wait, the more dangerous it gets,” he explained. “I can’t run forever.”

“You _can_ ,” she insisted.

“No,” he said softly, and an emotion that she couldn’t name flickered through his eyes as he looked down at her. “I can’t.”

“Promise you’ll come back.”

“Leia-”

“ _Promise_ me.”

Han nodded slowly. “Okay.” He turned his head to kiss her softly, tangling his fingers in her loose hair just as Chewie appeared at the top of the ladder, letting out a short guffaw when he saw them together, before turning to rumble something incomprehensible to Han.

Leia buried her face in Han’s shoulder, embarrassed, and she could feel his body shaking with laughter as he said, “Okay, pal. Be down there soon.”

“What did he say?” Leia asked as she heard the Wookiee’s footsteps retreating down the ladder.

Han laughed again, a soft, warm sound as he took Leia’s hand in his and pulled her to her feet. “That it’s about time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is sheev palpatine's world and we're all just living in it  
> (i scream into the void, come scream back)
> 
> [natrasharomanova.tumblr.com](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com/) / twitter [@hoboskywalker](https://twitter.com/hoboskywalker)


	5. the storm before the calm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was her mother's daughter to the core.
> 
> (Or, Bespin, featuring a fresh perspective.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -i know i'm posting this like SUPER soon after the last update but i'm taking off to the wilderness for a while and won't have the opportunity to write so i wanted to make sure i got this up  
> -speaking of which, i'm running 30 miles through the wilderness this saturday so if you never hear from me again it's probably because i got eaten by a bear  
> -this chapter is extremely self-indulgent because i fucking love bespin  
> -your feedback literally gives me LIFE and is like 90% of the reason i keep writing (the other 10% is coffee), please never stop talking to me  
> -this chapter's song (it's a thing now because i said so): [Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfFi4Q7ueA8)

Putting himself between Leia and Vader was instinct.

It wasn’t until the adrenaline had begun to dissipate and Vader had used the Force to literally rip his blaster out of his hand (which was unfair, really) that Han realized he’d been ready to die for her. Kill for her, preferably. But die for her if necessary.

It was almost comforting, the ease with which he’d shielded her life with his own. As much as he’d have preferred for them to all get out of this alive, he had a feeling he might be dying for her before this was all over.

He didn’t let go of her hand.

He heard the slight, almost imperceptible hitch in Leia’s breath as the door swung shut behind them and she was forced to sit across the table from the man that terrified her more than anything else in the galaxy. The man who had tortured her with his own hands. The man whose name she couldn’t say without venom in her voice and shadows in her eyes. The man who’d destroyed her entire world.

Han lifted their joined hands, placing them on the table in front of him in an act of open defiance.

_Just try._

_[It was almost comical to him. The princess and the smuggler. The way he’d stepped in front of her as if the flimsy blaster in his hand could protect her from the most powerful force in the galaxy. The way he refused to let go of her hand, glaring across the table as he did so, as if his mere presence in the room could protect her._

_As if she was the one who needed protecting._

_Smuggler scum, and the princess of a dead planet, both unaware that they were simply pawns in something so much bigger than themselves._

_He supposed they made a fitting pair._

_His eyes shifted back to the princess’s face. Her eyes held the same raw hatred as Solo’s, but she carried a carefully masked fear underneath. The tension rolled off of her in waves, like a palpable energy that he could almost reach out and touch._

_Almost as if…but no, that was impossible._

_Wasn’t it?_

_The memories sprang to the forefront of his mind, unbidden. Memories of another boy from another lifetime, who’d fallen in love with a queen. Love. It was a feeling as forgotten to him as that of the sunlight on his skin or the breeze in his hair or the sand beneath his feet._

_He’d always hated the sand._

_It had held him prisoner, and she’d been a freedom. A form of salvation. But as it turned out, he’d only ended up leaving one prison behind for another darker, stronger one._

_Leaving her behind._

_'You’re going down a path I can’t follow.'_

_And as he continued to survey the princess across the table he watched her eyes narrow, watched her grip tighten on the smuggler’s hand, and he realized that yes, she was her mother’s daughter after all.]_

“I’d like a word with Captain Solo. Alone.”

Leia’s grip was hard enough to break his fingers. “He’s not the one you want.” And Han could _feel_ her shaking next to him. “I’m the one who-”

Vader interrupted her coolly. “You have no idea what I want.”

“It’s okay,” Han told her, even though it was very much _not_ okay, because she deserved to have someone else be strong for her, for once. Because it might be the last chance he got.

“No.” She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes as she clung desperately to his arm. “I won’t let them-”

“ _Leia_.” Her name was all it took for all of the fight to drain out of her and she slumped against the table, her hand going limp in his. He leaned forward, pressing his lips briefly to her forehead. “It’s okay,” he told her again, and as two Stormtroopers grabbed his arms and forced him out of the room after Vader, he hoped with all of his remaining strength that his last words to her wouldn’t be a lie.

What followed was a haze of pain; burning coils pressed to his face until he couldn’t hold back his screams any longer, booted feet colliding with his stomach over and over until he tasted blood in his mouth, and Vader, sifting through his mind, pulling memories from him at will. _Chewie, pledging him a life debt. Luke, frozen and bloody on Hoth, as Han blew air into his lungs in a desperate attempt to revive him. The look in Leia’s eyes when he’d kissed her for the first time, a look of-_

 _No,_ Han thought savagely. _No. You can’t have that._

“What do you _want_ from me?” he screamed, spitting blood in Vader’s face.

The monster turned and left the room without a backwards glance.

* * *

Han didn’t know how long they sat there in the cell before another contingent of armed guards showed up, hauling them to their feet and shoving them down the hallway at gunpoint. Chewie growled loudly, earning himself a jab in the stomach with a blaster, so Han voiced his question for him. “Where are you taking us?”

No answer. Not that he’d really been expecting one.

Their destination turned out to be a bedroom. A small, windowless bedroom, but still more comfortable than the cold cell they’d been waiting in. It had _Lando_ written all over it. The bastard would sell them out to the Empire without a second thought, sending them off to be tortured at Vader’s hand, but at least he’d make sure they were comfortable while he was doing it.

Chewie dumped a powered-off pile of 3PO limbs unceremoniously on the ground as he turned to tug fruitlessly at the locked door behind them, sinking to the floor with his head in his hands as his efforts proved futile.

He was acutely conscious of Leia leaning up against the wall for support, her face pale as she stared at the single bed in front of them with trepidation.

“Are you hurt?” Han asked her.

She ignored him. “You need to lie down.” She looped an arm around his waist and they slowly made their way across the room. He winced as she gently lowered him onto the bed, the motion like a knife in his ribs.

Leia knelt beside him, concern etched into the lines of her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Broken rib. Maybe two. It’s fine.”

“Han-”

“Are you hurt?” he asked her again.

She shook her head. “They didn’t ask me anything. They didn’t even touch me. Lando said Vader was looking for Luke, but if that’s true…” she trailed off, staring at where Han’s blood had dried on her fingertips. All of a sudden she shot to her feet, throwing her hands in the air as she began to pace across the short length of the room. “None of this makes any _sense_!”

“Leia, Leia, hey.” He waited until she turned to look at him before motioning to the empty space beside him and asking her softly, “Come here?”

They’d never shared a bed before. It wasn’t necessarily a boundary they’d set on purpose; they’d fallen asleep together on the _Falcon_ more times than he could count, but he’d always been careful to never push the boundaries, never take more than she was willing to give.

Until now.

But there was a good chance that they weren’t making it out of this alive, so, what the hell. Right?

Slowly, she crossed the room, pausing when she got to the edge of the bed, as if she was waiting for some kind of invitation to enter this previously uncharted territory.

Han reached over, pulling back the covers, and it was as if his actions broke a spell. Leia slipped into bed, balling her knees up to her chest as she leaned back against the headboard. Han grimaced in pain as he attempted to drag himself into a seated position beside her. Despite the fact that she’d told him she wasn’t hurt, her face was still the palest he’d ever seen, and he knew better than to think that she was completely unaffected by what they’d just been through. He thought about how he’d have felt if their positions had been reversed, if it had been her being tortured by Vader while he’d been forced to sit in a cell next door, listening to the screams drift through the walls. The thought almost made him grateful for his broken ribs.

“You okay?” he asked her softly.

She shook her head minutely. “I’m scared.”

The lines in her face spelled exhaustion, and he found himself trying to remember the last time he saw her close her eyes for more than a few minutes. “Do you think you can sleep?”

“I don’t know.”

He smoothed the stray hair back from her forehead, pressing his lips to her temple. “Try.”

She shifted her weight so that she was leaning up against him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, and Han slid an arm around her waist, pulling her closer as her eyes fluttered shut.

She looked peaceful when she slept, and as Han watched her he remembered a day that felt like a lifetime ago and yesterday all at once, the day she’d been the one tortured at Vader’s hand instead of him. He’d watched her fall asleep that night too, as she’d desperately searched the stars for the hole left by her home planet, for some indication that the galaxy was different because a world was gone.

He hadn’t understood, back then. Not really. But now, as he looked down at the person that had somehow become his world, his axis, he couldn’t help but think that the stars would shine a little dimmer if she was gone.

 _Love_. That was the word that Vader had so nearly succeeded at pulling from his mind. It was the word he’d been careful never to give voice to, even in his thoughts, because to love was to show weakness, and Han Solo was many things, but he was _not_ weak.

He still wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but he knew that had their places been reversed, had it been Leia screaming in pain in the cell next to him, he would have told Vader anything he needed to know.

Maybe it wasn’t the most poetic definition of love, but it was his.

“I love you,” he tried experimentally, savouring the feeling of the words falling from his lips, hating himself just a little bit for knowing that it was the kind of thing he’d never be able to say to her if she was awake.

“Han?”

 _Shit_.

She stirred feebly, a small hand closing around one of his, eyes still closed and voice rough from sleep as she asked him, “You say something?”

“Nothing, sweetheart,” he whispered against her hair. “Go back to sleep.”

* * *

They came for him early the next morning. Well, all of them, really. But he was the only one that was handcuffed, marched down the hallway with an armed escort of Stormtroopers while Leia and Chewie were shoved along behind, the jumble of tangled limbs that was 3PO still strapped to Chewie’s back.

“What’s going on, _buddy_?” Han tried to inject as much bravado into his voice as possible as he faced Lando, conscious of Leia and Chewie standing behind them. He still didn’t understand why they were there, that is, until Vader entered from the other side of the chamber, and Han’s stomach plummeted, the nausea causing him to stumble as he realized what was happening.

He was making them watch.

Chewie, to his credit, was not content to stand back and watch, but if he didn’t calm down he’d end up getting them all killed. Han gripped the Wookiee’s arm tightly, forcing his friend to look into his eyes as he made him swear to protect Leia, trying to convey more through his gaze than he could possibly say in words. _Don’t fight them. Save your strength for her. She’s going to need someone to be strong._

And then his eyes met hers and the rest of the world disappeared. He focused on the fire in her eyes and the taste of her lips, breathing it in like a last gasp of air for a dying man, because for all he knew, that was what he was.

They wrenched him away from her, but he held her eyes with his. _Just look at me, sweetheart. You’ll be okay. Just keep looking at me._

“I love you.”

The words hurt more than anything Vader could ever do to him. He’d said the same words in the middle of the night as she slept, like a coward.

Leia had never been a coward.

So he told her the only thing he could, and he poured every last ounce of his soul into it, and he hoped she could understand.

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jar jar binks deserved better  
> (i scream into the void, come scream back)
> 
> [natrasharomanova.tumblr.com](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com/) / twitter [@hoboskywalker](https://twitter.com/hoboskywalker)


	6. broken, as she waits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time, as it turns out, passes in a disappointingly regular fashion when you don't happen to be frozen in carbonite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -firstly and perhaps most importantly, this chapter touches on depression with a very brief mention of suicide. i'm including this warning so that those triggered by these sorts of things can choose to pass by this chapter if they'd like, but i feel that these are things that are too often glossed over and i felt compelled to write about them.
> 
> on a less depressing note:  
> -this chapter brought to you by the entire Graceland album, which i listened to on repeat while writing  
> -it's midnight and i haven't proofread  
> -thank you all so much for your continued support and patience in dealing with my maddeningly inconsistent update schedule  
> -song of the week: [Starlight - Slash & Myles Kennedy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywQutN0j33o) (yes, that Slash, don't judge before you listen)  
> -please never stop talking to me i love you all so deeply  
> -@ whoever left that jar jar comment on the last chapter i just want to talk

**_leia_ **

It was all too much.

She tried to focus on the little things, one at a time. Luke needed medical attention. She could focus on that.

“Leia.”

She ignored him, methodically strapping the oxygen mask to his face before turning to face the stump that was all that remained of his right hand. As she was attempting to tie a tourniquet, Luke reached up with his left hand to lift the mask from his face.

“ _Leia_.”

“You’ve lost a lot of blood.” She wrapped another bandage tightly around the end of his right arm. “This should hold until we can get back to the fleet. I’m afraid it’s the best I can do with what we’ve got here.”

“Where’s Han?”

It was like a punch to the gut. She tried to ignore it, tried to maintain her composure so she could be strong for Luke. She knew she’d need to tell him eventually, _soon_ , but it was all too fresh, her emotions still too raw.

“Leia.”

“You need to rest,” she snapped, perhaps a touch more harshly than she’d intended. Hurt mingled with confusion on Luke’s face as she helped him replace the oxygen mask. “I’m going to go see how long before we can get you to a real medic.” She left the room hurriedly, averting her gaze so she couldn’t see the pain lingering in his eyes.

She made her way back to the cockpit in a daze, acutely conscious of the fact that if they didn’t make it back to the Rebel fleet, and _soon_ , she was going to lose both of them.

And, as if she needed _more_ on top of everything, she still wasn’t sure to what degree she should be trusting the man in the pilot’s seat. _Han’s seat_ , she tried not to think.

When she finally managed to make contact with _Home One_ after the relief of the jump to hyperspace had sunk in, it was _Wedge Antilles_ of all people who answered.

“Leia? _Leia_ , where have you _been_?”

“Wedge, what are you doing in Command?”

“I-”

“Never mind,” she interrupted, because anything was too much for her mind to process at the moment. “I need to talk to Rieekan.”

“Did you find Luke?”

“Find Luke? No, he found _us_ , Wedge, what are you _talking_ about?”

Rieekan’s voice took over before Wedge could answer and Lando followed his instructions, docking the _Falcon_ easily on the giant Rebel cruiser.

Chewie rumbled softly as he patted Leia on the shoulder, gesturing to Lando as he spoke. Her Shyriiwook still wasn’t the best, although it had improved over the course of their trip to Bespin, and she thought she understood the word ‘stay’.

“Are you sure?” she asked him.

He nodded once, eyes sad as he pulled her into an embrace, and Leia struggled to hold back tears as she realized just how much she was losing.

“We’re going to try and track down Fett,” Lando explained. “We know Jabba has a palace on Tatooine and we’re pretty sure that’s where he’s headed. We’ll find out where Han is, and then we’ll work from there.”

 _I’m coming_ , she wanted to say, but she knew that her duties, for the moment at least, lay with the Alliance. With Luke. So she bid Lando and Chewie farewell and she tried not to make it sound too final.

She’d barely set foot on _Home One_ before Mon Mothma enveloped her in a warm embrace. “We were so relieved to hear that you were safe.”

“Luke?” she managed to ask.

“In good hands. Is Captain Solo with you?”

All Leia could do was shake her head.

Mon, to her credit, didn’t press Leia for answers, and instead led her down the long hallway to the medical wing, where a pair of droids were attending to Luke. “Come debrief me when you’re ready,” she said gently, and Leia nodded, swallowing around the lump in her throat as she made her way hesitantly to Luke’s bedside.

If he’d looked worse for wear on the _Falcon_ nobody would have known it from the way he was smiling as he conversed casually with Lando through the commlink. Despite her inner turmoil, Luke’s smile, contagious as ever, lifted her spirits ever so slightly.

She rose almost subconsciously as she watched the _Falcon_ pull away from the Rebel cruiser, feet carrying her to the window so she could watch the ship that she’d begun to think of as her home fade slowly out of sight.

Luke’s arm around her shoulders was warm and steady and she leaned into him, accepting the comfort. All she wanted was to ignore the events of the past twenty-four hours, to pretend that it had all been an elaborate fever dream and that soon she’d wake up on the _Falcon_ to the sounds of Han tinkering with the hyperdrive.

But there was something nagging at the back of her mind; two somethings, really, the missing pieces of the puzzle she’d been trying to put together in her mind ever since Luke had shown up unexpectedly on Bespin.

“Luke, what did Wedge mean, when he asked if we found you?”

“Well…” Luke flushed slightly as he looked down at his right hand, clenching and unclenching his fingers as if to convince himself that they worked, “I haven’t exactly…been with the fleet.”

The way he admitted it left no doubt in Leia’s mind that his absence hadn’t been a scheduled one, and that he likely hadn’t told anyone in Command where he was going, or for how long.

But that meant…

“If you weren’t with the fleet,” she said slowly, turning the question over in her mind, “how did you know where to find us?”

“I heard you,” he said simply.

“What do you mean, you heard us?”

“Through the Force. The same way you heard me.”

“I heard…?” Leia shook her head. “Luke, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Maybe ‘heard’ isn’t the right word. It was more like…I _felt_ the two of you. Because _he_ wanted me to.” Luke clenched his right fist tightly. “He knew…”

“He knew you’d come,” Leia supplied. “But I still don’t understand what-”

“How did you know where to find me on Bespin?” Luke interrupted, his eyes burning with a raw, terrifying intensity as he looked at her, daring her to say what she knew, in the deepest recesses of her mind, to be true, because if she admitted that then she’d have to admit a whole other host of things to herself, and it was already all _too much_.

“I guess…I guess I just got lucky,” she lied, averting her eyes from his gaze.

“You know that’s not true.”

Luke’s voice was soft, and yet still insistent, and Leia brought a hand to her head, digging her fingers into her temple as if the physical pressure would clear her mind.

“ _Leia_ ,” he pressed, when she didn’t answer.

“I don’t _know_ , Luke! I don’t know how I knew where to find you and I don’t know why Vader wanted you to come to Bespin and I don’t know where they’re taking Han and I don’t know _why_ and-” she took a deep, shuddering breath as the tears she’d been barely holding back all day finally spilled over, blurring her vision as she admitted, “and I’m _scared_.”

His arms around her were gentle as he slowly guided her into an embrace. Leia buried her face in his shoulder and let her tears soak into the fabric of his shirt; tears for her and for him and for Han and for Chewie and for the happiness that she’d had within her grasp for a moment so fleeting it already felt like a dream, like water slipping through her fingers as she tried desperately to hold on.

“Why do I always lose everything?” she said in a broken whisper.

“Hey.” Luke pulled back, holding her by the shoulders as he looked at her seriously. “You haven’t lost me yet.”

“And I’ve been trying so hard,” she joked feebly, giving him a small, watery smile.

“We’re going to get him back,” he told her, with so much sincerity in his voice that she wanted nothing more than to believe him. “You know that, right?”

Luke, eternally the optimist. The only person in the entire galaxy who could come out of a fight with Darth Vader with less hands than he went into it with and find a way to smile about it mere _hours_ later. The one who always chose to see the best in everyone. One of the only people who cared about her not because of her parents or her power or her influence but because she was simply Leia, his friend.

One of the only people who was willing to organize a rescue mission not because of Han’s tremendous commitment or value to the Alliance, but because he was simply Han, their friend.

“Yeah,” she told him. “I know.”

* * *

Delusions of the Alliance mounting a full-scale rescue mission faded as quickly as they’d come. If Leia was honest with herself, she’d always known it wasn’t an option, but it hadn’t stopped her heart from sinking as Rieekan had smiled sadly at her and Luke when they’d pitched the idea. “We just don’t have that kind of manpower.”

 _He’s not an Alliance member_ , Leia wanted to say. _That’s what you mean, isn’t it?_ But deep down, she knew that wasn’t true either, that it didn’t matter how much he’d done for the Alliance in the past. It was the same reason she would have died on the Death Star, had it not been for a smuggler, a Wookiee, and a boy from Tatooine. War was about collateral damage, after all.

“Leia!” Luke called after her as she stormed from the room, grabbing her by the wrist.

“He’s not expendable,” she snapped. “Not to me.”

“It’s okay,” Luke told her. “We’ll do it ourselves.”

She threw herself into the mission because it was a way to escape. Every waking moment was spent poring over datapads, looking for something, _anything_ , that might lead them to Han. Her cramped quarters on _Home One_ were soon overflowing with maps and charts that she spent her days and nights poring over, more often than not falling asleep at a table with her head pillowed on a stack of notes when her eyes finally fell shut of their own volition.

But as days blended into weeks and weeks blended into months, not even Luke’s seemingly unfailing optimism could keep the darkness at bay. It was a darkness that blurred the edges of her vision and tinted every thought in her mind; a wall so high, so thick, so impenetrable that even the light of the stars on their brightest night couldn’t pierce the darkness that surrounded her heart.

Her room was too cold. The ship was too cold. The whole damn _galaxy_ was too cold.

The feeling of hopelessness became suffocating, as lead after lead continued to turn up nothing. They heard nothing but silence and more silence from Lando and Chewie’s end, until Leia began to feel like she was the only person in the world still searching.

And when searching became too exhausting, she lay curled up under the blanket she’d brought from the _Falcon_ , the one that still smelled like pine and smoke and _Han_ , and she cried until her chest ached and her eyes were swollen and her hair was soaked with tears. And as she stared out at the stars that no longer held anything for her, she prayed to all the gods in the galaxy that this time, when she fell asleep, she wouldn’t wake up.

It wasn’t that she wanted to die, exactly. It was just that she didn’t want to be alive anymore.

**_luke_ **

It killed him that he didn’t know how to help her.

Leia hadn’t told him much of what had happened when he’d been on Dagobah – she hadn’t told him much of _anything_ , really, and she’d only continued to grow more closed off as the weeks had passed, shutting herself away for days on end. Every time he saw her she was paler, thinner, the dark circles under her eyes even more prominent.

He still hadn’t told her about Vader.

At first he told himself he was waiting for the right time. And having a robotic hand attached to the stump of his arm was not the right time. Holding Leia while she sobbed into his shoulder was _definitely_ not the right time. He began to lose track of all of the not-the-right-times.

Because how did you bring something like that up in casual conversation? _Hey remember the guy who tortured you and almost had you executed? The guy who tortured Han? The guy who blew up your home planet and cut off my hand? Yeah, that’s my dad._

He was afraid that even Leia might not be able to forgive him for it. But at the same time, he felt like it was something he owed to her.

Which was how he found himself knocking on her door well past midnight, still not sure what he was going to say if she opened it.

She didn’t.

“Leia?” he called softly. “I know you’re in there.”

No answer.

“Leia, talk to me, please.”

Silence.

Luke heaved a deep sigh. “Leia, I’m coming in.” The door was unlocked. Not that it mattered, much. He’d have blasted his way in if he needed to.

The sight that greeted him upon entering was enough to force all thoughts of Vader from his mind. Leia was curled up on the bed in fetal position, her hair loose and tangled, her body shaking with silent sobs. It was enough to stop Luke dead in his tracks; he’d seen her vulnerable before, of course, but _never_ like this. She’d been his rock when he’d needed it, and he’d been hers, but now…

Well, now it felt like they were both lost at sea.

He was at her side before he remembered deciding to be there, his hand on her shoulder. “Leia,” he murmured softly. “Leia, hey, talk to me.”

She shook her head minutely. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Hey, come here.” He half-lifted her into a seated position beside him, shifting his arm so it was around her shoulders, noticing that her shaking had begun to subside ever so slightly.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, and Luke wondered how long she’d been like this before he found her. He wondered how much of her time had been spent like this as she’d shut herself further and further away – as he’d _let_ her, because he’d been so consumed with thoughts about Vader, about _himself_ , to notice that she needed him.

And Leia, who made a point of never needing help, would never have asked him for anything.

He hated her for trying to do this alone, but he hated himself more.

 _Oh, and by the way, the guy comforting you right now is the son of your worst enemy_.

Now was _definitely_ not the time.

“Talk to me?” he asked her again as her breathing began to even out.

Her voice was impossibly small when she responded, “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,” Luke replied honestly. “It’s just that…we never talk anymore. I need you to help me help you.”

Her eyes were downcast, her shoulders slumped forward, as she opened her mouth and said the absolute last words Luke had expected to hear.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bad friend.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he spat harshly, “that’s not what I meant Leia, I never wanted you to… _shit…_ ”

“Vader almost _killed_ you, Luke. I never even asked you how you were feeling.”

He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. “Okay. Let’s start there.”

“How are you feeling?”

Terrified. Like the weight of the entire galaxy rested on his shoulders. Like he was doomed to go down the same path his father had. Scared that this dark side of the Force would lure him in the way it had Vader. These were all truths that he both owed to her and knew that he couldn’t burden her with now. Keeping the truth from her was selfish, in part; he was afraid that admitting to be the son of her worst enemy would cause a rift between them that nothing could bridge, but he was beginning to wonder how long he could keep up the charade.

“Surprisingly okay,” he lied. “You know, considering.”

She reached over to tap his prosthetic. “This work okay with the lightsaber?”

“Leia.”

“What?” she asked, with a feigned innocence that he might have believed a year ago back before he knew her almost as well as he knew the back of his hand. Which wasn’t the greatest metaphor, really, because the back of his hand had actually been quite unfamiliar recently.

“I know what you’re doing. Stop trying to distract me and tell me what’s wrong.”

“I…” she started, looking down at her hands, her thumb tracing a scar on her palm. She made a soft, choked noise in the back of her throat and shook her head, a small, broken motion that made Luke’s heart clench.

“Is this about Han?” he tried.

Slowly, still absently tracing and retracing the scar on her hand, she nodded.

Han and Leia were still an enigma to him, even after all this time. They’d been on each other’s nerves from almost the moment they met, and the screaming matches of theirs he’d been so unfortunate as to witness had left him reeling for days afterwards. And yet, he couldn’t deny that they cared very deeply for each other.

But for Leia, who hadn’t let her emotions come in the way of her work when she’d lost her family and her planet, to be this torn up over _Han Solo_ , of all people, well…oh.

_Oh._

“Leia did you…are you…?” he trailed off, not sure how to ask her. He felt a slight pang of betrayal – if anything _had_ happened between the two of them, she’d never told him – but it was fleeting, disappearing as quickly as it had come as he remembered the multitude of secrets he was keeping from her.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, a raw vulnerability in her eyes when she finally looked up at him. “I don’t know if we’re… _what_ we’re…I just want him back, Luke.”

As if it could read her mind, the radio on the table by Leia’s bed crackled to life, emitting a short whine of static before the voices on the other end became audible. Chewie’s ecstatic warble echoed in the background, and Leia actually _smiled_.

“Hey,” Luke said, sliding to his feet and holding out a hand as he felt the tug of a smile beginning to spread across his own face. “What do you say we go see an old friend?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> paul simon invented music  
> (i scream into the void, come scream back)
> 
> [natrasharomanova.tumblr.com](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com/) / twitter [@hoboskywalker](https://twitter.com/hoboskywalker)


	7. carry me home in good health

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As far as terribly executed rescue missions go, they've actually had worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -i have no excuse for why this update took so long  
> -chapter title shamelessly stolen from [Who Do You Love - Marianas Trench](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_CbClV_eTU) (this song really deserves to be listened to while travelling full speed down back country roads with the windows down so please get the full experience)  
> -i've slept for 8 of the past 50 hours so any typos are a result of that don't @ me  
> -i still don't know who left the jar jar comment on chapter 5 but i would very much like to become acquainted with you  
> -please talk to me your feedback is literally the only reason i've made it this far (unless you want me to stop writing in which case pls feel free to tell me to shut up)

“Where’s Leia?” Han asked, for the second time that day. The floor of the skiff was unsteady under his feet and he _still_ couldn’t see, and based on what he could hear, complete and utter chaos was erupting around them.

“Right here.” Her voice came from behind him and he turned blindly towards it, only to lose his footing and stumble forwards into the railing of the skiff. “Here,” and he could hear the barely suppressed laughter in Leia’s voice as she took his arm. “Come sit down before you hurt yourself any more.”

He let her guide him to a bench, sinking onto it gratefully. He’d always heard that the absence of one of your senses was supposed to make the other ones stronger, but that was clearly not the case with his balance, which seemed to be significantly worse when he couldn’t see where he was going. An absurd thought struck him for an instant and he froze, panic clawing at his stomach.

“Leia.”

Her hand on his shoulder was firm, but gentle. “What’s wrong?”

He tried to keep his voice from rising with panic as he told her, “I still can’t see.”

“That’s normal,” she reassured him. “Or, at least, according to the research we’ve done, it’s fairly normal. Vision is expected to return within twenty to thirty hours.”

“ _Hours_ , damn it, no, I need to see _now_.”

“Relax.” She pressed her lips briefly to his cheek. “We have everything under control.”

“Really? Because it sure didn’t sound like it a minute ago,” he joked. “This wasn’t exactly a flawless rescue, sweetheart.”

“Right, because I’m _sure_ you’re the expert on flawless rescues.”

“We got off the Death Star, didn’t we?”

“Right into a trash compacter, where we almost died. And I didn’t see you strangling any Hutts while you were at it.”

“You _what?_ ” he choked.

“Oh,” she said, almost like an afterthought. “Jabba’s dead, by the way. I killed him.”

“ _You_ …how did you…?”

“He tried to chain me up,” she said casually, but he could detect an edge of something in her voice that was decidedly _not_ casual – the way that her voice caught ever so slightly on the word ‘chain’ – “and I didn’t like it. So I took the chain and I strangled him with it.”

Han reached towards what he thought was her shoulder, freezing when his hands came in contact with nothing but bare skin. “Leia, what are you…what did…?” he stuttered as he moved to pull his hand back. And then his fingers brushed against a thick, metal collar, and his confusion was instantly replaced with a hot, burning rage that would have blinded him if he’d been able to see. “He _didn’t_.”

He tightened his grip on her shoulder, conscious of how hot her bare skin felt under his fingers. She was going to burn up if they didn’t get her out of this heat soon. “I’m fine,” she told him, the way she always did when she was very much _not_ fine.

“Leia,” he warned.

“I’m fine,” she told him again. “We’re almost there.”

He recognized the abrupt change of topic but he decided to let it slide, for now, at least, hoping that their lack of privacy was the source of her reluctance to talk about what had happened. “Almost where?”

“The _Falcon_.” She wrapped her hand around his wrist, pressing a canteen into his hand. “Here, drink this. You’re dehydrated.”

He brought the canteen to his lips obediently, grimacing as he swallowed the tepid water. “It’s warm.”

“Everything’s warm here. Drink it.”

Han forced himself to drink, closing and re-opening his eyes as he did so to see if the act would help his vision to return more quickly. By the time he’d finished the water he was able to see the fuzzy outlines of his own hands, and when he looked up he could just make out the shadow of something distinctly _Falcon_ -shaped on the horizon, with something smaller that he couldn’t quite make out parked beside it.

“Leia?” Han felt her leave his side as she moved towards wherever Luke’s voice was coming from. He continued to shut and re-open his eyes; he could have sworn the outline of the _Falcon_ was getting clearer but it may have just been because they were getting closer. Behind him, Luke was saying something about Lando taking them to meet up with the Rebel fleet.

“What about you?” Leia asked, as if she could read Han’s mind. He was beginning to think that maybe she could.

“There’s somewhere else I need to go first,” Luke replied, his voice was moving closer until Han could feel a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon, old buddy.”

“Be careful, kid.”

Luke laughed brightly. “I’ll do my best.”

“Can you walk?” Leia asked, returning to Han’s side as the skiff came to a stop.

He nodded, stopping when the motion sent pain shooting through his head. “Probably.”

She wrapped an arm around his waist anyways, supporting as much of him as her small frame could handle as they took their leave of Luke and made their way slowly across the gangplank to the _Falcon_. He tried not to lean on her too heavily, conscious of the fact that she’d just been through her own ordeal and likely wasn’t at her strongest. Still, he breathed a sigh of relief when they were finally back on board his ship.

He made to sit in the pilot’s seat but Leia shook her head – or at least, he thought she did, it was still hard for him to make out everything around him – guiding him back through the hallway until they reached his bunk.

“Sit,” she instructed, pushing down on his shoulder until he complied.

“Leia, I should be-”

“Believe it or not Han,” she interrupted, “you’re not the only person who knows how to fly this ship.” Her hand was firm on his shoulder as he tried to stand, eventually giving up when he realized that if he couldn’t even overpower Leia he likely wasn’t in any state to be piloting a spaceship. “So.” She narrowed her eyes as she gave him a quick once-over. “What’s the damage?”

He blinked once, twice, and she swam into focus, her outline blurry but still very much _there_. He felt the hot rage fill him again momentarily as he beheld that ridiculous thing Jabba had forced her into. _He’s lucky he’s already dead_ , Han thought to himself savagely.

“ _Han_ ,” she pressed, her voice halting his internal monologue, bringing him back to the present.

He shot her what he hoped looked like a casual smile, but probably came out as more of a grimace. “You mean besides the broken ribs?”

“Broken ribs? But that was….” Understanding dawned slowly on her face. “ _Oh._ Of course, your injuries wouldn’t have healed while you were in there, I should have thought of that!”

“While I was…hang on, Leia, how long have I been gone?”

 _Long enough,_ the voice in his mind told him.

“There’s not much we can do for broken ribs right now but I’ll have someone take a look as soon as we get back to the fleet,” Leia continued, ignoring his question.

“ _Leia_ ,” he said sharply.

She paused, her eyes impossibly heavy as she looked up at him. He drank her in with his gaze, trying to count the missing days in the thinness of her face and the shadows under her eyes, but it was impossible. _Too long_ , he knew, but _how_ long?

She took a step closer to him, her teeth worrying at her bottom lip. “What is it?”

“How long?” he whispered.

Her façade crumbled as she folded in on herself, tear tracks glistening on her cheeks as she sank to the floor, her body shaking like a leaf. Shocked by this abrupt change in her demeanour, Han lurched unsteadily to his feet, sinking to the ground beside her as he pulled her roughly into his arms. The motion caused a sharp spasm of pain to flash through his ribs but he ignored it, holding her tighter until he wasn’t sure if he was shaking or if she was shaking or if they both were.

Her eyes were red and swollen when she finally pulled back, and the front of his shirt was damp with her tears. And she was _still_ in that ridiculous metal contraption.

 _One thing at a time_ , he thought, tugging gently at the collar around her neck. “Hey. Let’s get this off of you.”

“I tried.” Her voice shook as her tears threatened to spill over again. “It’s locked. I can’t…”

“I’m a smuggler sweetheart. I can unlock anything. Turn around.”

She stiffened slightly but otherwise didn’t move, still facing him, her watery gaze fixed blankly at a point over his shoulder.

“Leia,” he said gently, touching her cheek with his fingertips briefly in an attempt to call her back from wherever her mind had ventured off to. “I can’t do this unless I can see the lock.”

She nodded once, turning slowly until her back was to him, her arms wrapped tightly around her bare stomach, almost as if she was trying to hold herself together.

Slipping one of the pins from her hair with deft fingers, Han began picking the lock, more by feel than by sight. After less than a minute he felt the clasp spring open in his fingers and made to pull the collar off, but the clasp was caked with rust, and he had to tug a little harder than he’d intended, resulting in a sharp intake of breath from Leia.

“ _Shit_ , Leia, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “But I think you may have taken some of my skin off with that.”

A closer look revealed a line of welts across the back of her neck where the collar had been, the skin rubbed raw until it was bleeding in several places. “ _Fuck_ ,” Han whispered, tracing his finger gently over the damaged skin, feeling her flinch slightly even underneath his feather-light touch. “I’m going to go get something to treat this,” he told her. “I’ll be right-”

“Wait.” Her voice was barely above a whisper but he paused instantly, waiting. “Can we…can we take the rest of it off first?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah,” he said, mentally kicking himself for not thinking of that. “Hang on.”

He rifled through his drawers, pulling out a shirt and a pair of pants, setting them on the bed next to her before he reached up to undo the clasp at her back. The welts on her back weren’t nearly as bad as the ones on her neck, but they were bad enough.

“Can you…uh…do you think you can do the bottom yourself?”

“Yes,” she said quickly.

“Uh…right. Okay. Well, you put those on,” he told her, tilting his head towards the piles of clothes he’d left on the bed. “I’ll be right back.”

When he returned a few minutes later with a first aid kit in hand, Leia was practically swimming in his clothes, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to her elbows. Han sank onto his bunk, motioning for Leia to do the same. She obeyed silently, sitting down with her back to him, flinching only slightly as he cleaned her wounds and smoothed bacta patches over her neck and back.

When he was satisfied with his treatment of her back his hands moved to her hair, methodically pulling out the pins, unravelling her braids until her hair fell down past her waist in loose waves. He’d seen her hair down before, of course, but it always amazed him just how _long_ it was. Alderaanians were proud of their hair, she’d told him once, but Leia’s hairstyles had always been more functional than elaborate. He wondered sometimes if she was reluctant to cut it because it was the last piece of home she had left.

Han wrapped his arms gently around her waist, pulling her into his lap until she was resting against his shoulder. “Leia.”

“Hmmm?”

“I don’t know how to…” he paused, shaking his head, unsure exactly how to breach the topic that had caused her to break in a way he’d never seen before. “Bespin,” he tried, “Vader, the carbonite, that was all _yesterday_ for me. I know it’s been longer than that for you but I can’t…I don’t know…” Han sighed, dragging a hand across his face. The exhaustion was beginning to set in as the adrenaline from their ordeal finally abated, and he forced his heavy eyes to stay open.

They sat in a silence that seemed to stretch into eternity before Leia finally spoke, her voice so soft he almost missed it as she told him, “It’s been a while.”

“How long is a while?”

She stayed silent for even longer this time, so long that he didn’t expect an answer, and so he was shocked when she finally whispered, “Six months.”

And then it felt like the entire world had fallen out from underneath him, because he had expected weeks, maybe, a month at most, but _six months_. Half a year that he’d spent frozen, sleeping, unaware, and she’d been…what? And here he was, thinking that they were fine, that they could just pick up where they’d left off, after she’d been on her own for _six months_.

“ _Fuck_ , Leia,” he spat, louder than he intended, guilt washing over him immediately as he felt her flinch in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he apologized quickly, letting his arms fall loose so she knew that she wasn’t being held against her will. “I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry, I just… _fuck_.”

“It’s not your fault, Han.” She turned to face him, taking his hands gently in hers, and the earnestness in her eyes caused a fresh wave of guilt wash over him because _she_ should not have been the one comforting _him_ after everything she’d just been through.

“ _Six months_ , Leia.”

“It’s not your fault,” she repeated, and the memories came to the surface unbidden; him telling her the same thing here on the _Falcon_ back on the night they’d met, when she’d blamed herself for Alderaan’s destruction. It was a memory that felt both ancient and immediate because here they both were, still just as broken as they’d been back on that first day that the galaxy had begun to tangle the threads of their lives together with a finality that would take them years to acknowledge.

A finality that had begun to feel less final, somehow.

“That’s not what I mean,” he told her finally. “That’s a long time. And,” he took a deep breath, forcing the next part out as quickly as possible so that it would hurt less, “if things are different now, if anything’s changed and you don’t want…well…”

“ _Han_.” Her lips on his were warm and steady and familiar; her arms around him were gentle but strong, and he leaned desperately into her touch the same way he had on Bespin when he’d thought it was the last time. “ _Nothing_ has changed,” she told him, pressing her forehead against his, a small smile dancing across her lips. “You’re still the same idiot.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, nodding. “But what about you?”

“What about me?”

There were things she didn’t need to tell him. Even in the dimness of his bunk with his eyesight still gradually returning, he could see that she was thinner, her face significantly narrower than the last time he’d seen her, and the hollow circles under her eyes had only become more prominent. Her eyes themselves, which had already seemed impossibly old in such a young body, looked like they held the weight of centuries.

He brushed a stray tear from the corner of her eye. “How have you been?”

Leia looked down, her lower lip trembling as she admitted, “I thought I’d lost you.”

 _I love you_. The words were on the tip of his tongue, and he knew there was no use waiting for the right time, that there wouldn’t _be_ a right time, that the right time was six months ago and he’d fucked it up more than he’d ever fucked anything up in his entire life (which was saying something, really).

So he smiled, and he hoped the gesture hid his inner turmoil as he told her, “You’re going to have to try a little harder than that, sweetheart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you'll be my bodyguard, i can be your long lost pal  
> (i scream into the void, come scream back)
> 
> [natrasharomanova.tumblr.com](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com/) / twitter [@hoboskywalker](https://twitter.com/hoboskywalker)


	8. when your heart wears thin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Commitment issues are relative.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all, this chapter makes a slight, vague reference to sexual assault. there's not a lot of detail, i just wanted to warn ahead of time. feel free to skip if that's something that bothers you, i won't be offended. <3
> 
> -this one isn't super plot heavy but i wanted to get it out asap because i have big plans for the next one and i have a feeling it might take me a while  
> -idk if anyone's still reading this but i was thinking of continuing the story post rotj because i'm really fascinated by the gap before tfa and what happened then (so if you're also interested let me know maybe?)  
> -i was on a combination of prescription strength allergy pills and caffeine when i wrote this chapter which is not something i would recommend (kids don't try this at home)  
> -i didn't proofread this #yolo  
> -obligatory chapter song: [beside you by marianas trench](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ0z1LH6RJc)

Han’s first days aboard _Home One_ were a flurry of being poked and prodded and examined by medics round the clock, which was apparently all part of having become a medical phenomenon overnight. ( _Over six months_ , he reminded himself.) He repeatedly told them that he was fine, that he hadn’t experienced any side effects from the freezing that he knew of, that the only damage to his body was the damage he’d incurred on Bespin _before_ he’d been frozen, but he eventually realized that they were less concerned with his physical well being and more concerned about learning as much as possible about the effects of carbonite on the human body.

Leia was distant during the time he spent in the medical wing (they wouldn’t even let him leave to sleep), but he told himself it was just because she was busy catching up on her leadership duties after she’d more or less dedicated the past six months to finding him. Part of him was grateful for the forced separation and the time that it allowed him to process things. The other part of him – the part that spent all day lying in bed processing things – was sick to _death_ of thinking.

The first thing he did when they finally discharged him was find Rieekan.

“Good to have you back, Solo,” the older man said, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Yeah,” Han agreed, feeling awkward despite the hours he’d spent lying in bed, rehearsing the words in his head. “That’s uhh…that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m…uh...well, I’m here to enlist, I guess. As an Alliance member or, whatever you…” he trailed off, hoping Rieekan would understand the weight of what he was trying to say.

It was the conclusion he’d come to, eventually, and once he’d come to it he’d been able to admit to himself that he’d always known it would end this way. Or begin this way, depending on the way he looked at things. _You could stay_ , she’d told him, back on that first night, and even then he’d ached with how much he’d wanted to _belong_ somewhere, but he’d tucked that away in a shadowy corner of his brain, behind the walls constructed from decades of experience; the knowledge that belonging was only temporary and would gouge a gaping hole in his heart even deeper than the one it filled, the knowledge that no matter how much it might hurt to not belong somewhere, he and Chewie were better off alone.

Until Bespin, when he’d been forced to face the reality of losing everything, and his final thought had been of her.

Rieekan’s answering smile helped to calm the jumble of nerves in Han’s stomach. “It’s been a long time coming, Solo.”

“Trust me,” Han replied, “I know.”

In his defense, he was going to tell her.

It wasn’t that he was hiding it from her, exactly, he was just waiting for a moment that never seemed to arrive in the flurry of preparing for battle and _another_ Death Star and Luke returning with a smile on his face but shadows in his eyes, telling Leia to ask him later when she’d wondered aloud what was wrong.

“General?” she asked him later after they had tucked themselves away for the night in Han’s bunk on the _Falcon,_ with nothing to do but wait until the morning, Leia leaning back against his shoulder, his fingers moving slowly against her scalp as he ran his hands through her loose hair.

“I was going to tell you.”

She sat up, arching an eyebrow, a skeptical look on her face. “When, exactly? After the battle?”

“Leia, you know I’d never-”

“When did this happen?”

“Yesterday. And I was _going_ to tell you, I swear, I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to…”

“Had to _what_ , Han?”

He shook his head distractedly. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just, this is going to be dangerous, and, well…”

“I should be where you are,” she said matter-of-fact-ly, and it was such a _Leia_ thing to say that he could feel his heart swelling with how much he loved her.

(He still hadn’t told her, of course, because how do you have that conversation when you’re heading into battle and the very real possibility of not making it out alive?

Bespin had been a battle of its own kind, and she’d told him then, but he’d never been as brave as her. He was starting to think that he never would be.)

So there he was, a general, a member of Alliance leadership in his own right. It was a commitment to staying, a commitment to _her_. It was _I love you_ in not as many words. He knew that she understood, the same way he knew that there were things between them that they didn’t need to talk about; things like the way she still sometimes woke in the early hours of the morning with tears in her eyes, or the way he’d catch her staring out the window, counting the stars. Some things didn’t need to be spoken aloud for them to be true.

“Surprised they didn’t give you your own command,” he told her. Not that he’d have let her go on her own, if he could help it.

“I’m not,” she said quietly.

He looked at her, hoping she could see the question in his eyes so he wouldn’t have to voice it out loud. Hoping that maybe she would read his thoughts, as he’d so often felt like she could.

“I haven’t exactly been…much of a leader while you were gone,” she said finally.

“What do you mean?”

She stared down at her hands, clenched around the fabric of her jacket as she confessed, “It’s been hard, Han. It’s been…really hard.”

“Hey.” He lifted her chin gently with his fingers until he could look her in the eye, trying to use his gaze to convey all the emotions that he wasn’t capable of putting into words. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He hadn’t pressed her for any details, and this was the most she’d given him since the whispered _six months_ on the _Falcon_ as they’d left Tatooine. Part of him didn’t want to know anything – wanted to pick up immediately where they’d left off and pretend the half a year he’d spent sleeping had never happened. Another, bigger part of him knew that it wasn’t fair of him to expect her to heal from this on her own, wanted to take away as much of the pain as she was willing to give him, wanted to promise her that this time he was here to stay.

But to a girl that had lost her entire world and then some, promises were as empty as the wind.

Leia shook her head minutely. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be… _shit_ , Leia, don’t be sorry. Just…I’m here, okay? No pressure, if you never want to talk about anything. But if you do, just know that…I’m here.”

 “Okay,” she said quietly. And then, with the shadow of a smile beginning to spread across her face, “So. General Solo. I like the sound of that. Even though I still think they were crazy to give you your own command.”

“We’re rebels, sweetheart. Everything we do is crazy.”

A light flush tinted her cheeks as her eyes flicked down again, her smile softening. “I like the sound of that too.”

“What’s that?”

She leaned up to capture his lips in hers, and he could feel her smiling against his mouth as she murmured, “We.”

He flicked his tongue sharply over her lower lip, eliciting a low moan from the back of her throat. He could feel the heat beginning to pool in his abdomen and he pulled her roughly into his lap, gasping into her mouth as her hips brushed up against his.

If he was honest with himself, he’d wanted her since Yavin at least, maybe longer. It would have been so easy for them to fall together in the wake of the destruction of the first Death Star after slightly too much wine, giddy from the Rebel victory, her eyes sparkling like diamonds in the moonlight as they lay under the stars. And he’d wanted her on Hoth, even as she’d been screaming at him in the passage, but especially when he’d returned from the cold and she’d been sitting there, waiting, with shadows under her eyes from her sleepless night. The trip to Bespin had almost killed him with how much he wanted her; an entire month spent on his ship with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Nothing but him, and her, and the wide open sky.

(And promises that were broken before they were made, and the ever-present reminder that he was leaving.)

He wasn’t leaving anymore.

(As if he ever could have.)

But something was wrong. It was the way his hands wrapped far too easily around her ribcage, the way she felt so small and thin and breakable in his arms. It was the urgency of her movements, the way she kissed him with the desperation of months spent wondering if the kiss on Bespin had been their last. It was the way she froze when his fingers brushed against the bare skin of her back.

“Leia-”

“It’s fine,” she said instantly, cutting him off. “I’m fine.”

He almost could have believed her, if it weren’t for the tear tracks glistening on her cheeks.

Pulling away from her was the hardest thing he’d ever done. “Leia, maybe now isn’t the best time.”

“Now might be the only time,” she countered, angrily brushing the tears from her face.

“That’s not the point.” He cupped her cheek tenderly, leaning in to press his lips briefly to her forehead, feeling her tremble against him. “Do you want this?”

“I…” she looked down at their intertwined bodies and then back up, conflict raging within her eyes as she admitted, “I’m not sure.”

“Well then it can wait until you are,” he said, trying to ignore the part of him that was burning with the desire for her. She’d waited six months for him. What was another day, another week, another year?

 _More time than you might have_ , his mind told him.

“But I _am_ ,” she insisted, frustration creeping into her tone. “It’s just…I don’t know how to…I’ve never…” she trailed off as she looked up at him with lost eyes.

And there it was, the thing he’d deliberately avoided asking her about since Tatooine – he’d hoped that maybe they’d never need to talk about it, but _now_ …

“Did anyone…have you ever been…” _please, don’t make me say it._

She stared at him blankly.

He took a deep breath, and took the plunge. “Did anyone… _do_ anything to you? Anything that you…that you didn’t want?”

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, she nodded.

Han cursed under his breath. “You don’t have to tell me what it was,” he said quickly. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I just…you’re safe here, you know that?”

“I know,” she whispered.

“If you need time, we have it. We have forever if you want it.” He was well past the point of not making promises.

“What if we die tomorrow?”

Han shrugged, because it was a very real possibility and there was no way to reassure her that they wouldn’t. But for the first time in a while, he had the funny, almost optimistic feeling that their luck hadn’t quite run out yet. “What if we don’t?”

Something about her changed that night. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but a little bit of the old fire returned to her eyes, and her smiles weren’t as difficult to coax out of her. She joked affectionately with him and Luke as they clambered on board their stolen Imperial shuttle the next morning, their sights set on the forest moon below them. It was like old times in a way Han hadn’t realized he was nostalgic for; the three of them in close quarters with Chewie acting like a disgruntled babysitter in an effort to disguise how much he truly enjoyed having the company.

So when Luke grinned at him from the co-pilot’s seat and Leia pressed her lips to his cheek and said, “Come on, General, let’s move,” Han thought to himself that maybe life as a rebel wasn’t so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hotel california was meant to be taken literally and the eagles are still trapped there  
> (i scream into the void, come scream back)
> 
> [natrasharomanova.tumblr.com](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com/) / twitter [@hoboskywalker](https://twitter.com/hoboskywalker)


	9. you get lighter the more it gets dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiding the fact that you're descended from a sith lord is a lot harder than it sounds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -i said this next one was going to be big and i didn't lie. in fact it got so big that i had to split it up into multiple chapters so here's the first half.  
> -i'm not in control of this story anymore, it's in control of me  
> -i am beyond grateful for everyone who's taken the time to let me know what you think of this story so far, your lovely comments are literally what have kept me going and i love you all more than you'll ever know  
> -chapter title from Sky Full of Stars by Coldplay (if you love yourself listen to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6XxjY-1e3M) acoustic version by Boyce Avenue it saved my life)

“I’m sorry,” Han said again, rubbing the back of his neck the way he often did when he was self-conscious. He wouldn’t look at her, and Leia hated him for it, because if this was the way he treated her _now_ , when he didn’t know, what would he think of her when he found out?

What she wanted, what she _needed_ , what she craved more than anything else, was to talk to Luke. Luke was the only other person in the galaxy who could possibly understand what she was going through, and he was gone, gone to face his father. _Their father_. Leia barely suppressed a shudder at the thought. She hated Luke for telling her, and she hated him for hiding the truth from her for so long, but at the same time, she loved him profoundly, and watching him leave had split her to her core, like she was losing a part of herself along with him.

Her _brother_.

She hadn’t lied when she’d told him that she’d always known. The knowledge had been buried somewhere, in the deepest recesses of her brain, behind walls and shadows in a place so dark it would take all the light in the galaxy to call it to the surface.

Luke was the brightest person she’d ever known.

And now he was gone, taking the light with him, leaving her shrouded in a darkness that was her own design, but felt even darker after the single, bright shining moment that she’d had a _family_ again. A family that had been ripped away from her before she’d even had a moment to think about what it all might mean.

“Leia. Tell me what’s wrong.” He added “please” so softly that she almost missed it, and her heart, already aching with the weight of the secrets it was forced to carry, threatened to shatter.

“I can’t,” she whispered, staring at her hands, wondering if she could use them to tear the life from someone’s throat the way she’d seen Vader do. _You have that power too,_ Luke had told her. _In time you’ll learn to use it as I have._

If that was power, she didn’t want it.

She couldn’t explain to Han that the only way she’d known how to find Luke on Bespin was because he’d spoken to her through the Force, not without explaining why she hadn’t been able to use that same power to protect herself from Vader, to protect _him_ from Vader, to stop Alderaan’s destruction-

 _No_ , she thought to herself forcefully. Because that was a door she wouldn’t be able to force shut once opened. There would be time after, if there was an after.

Han finally dropped his hand from his neck, closing the short distance between them in one stride. He reached for her hands, lifting them gently in his own. Rough, calloused fingers traced lightly over the scar on her palm as he slowly lifted her hand to his mouth. Leia let her eyes flutter shut as Han’s breath ghosted over her palm, heat radiating out from the point where his lips made contact with her hand.

“Leia,” he murmured against her skin. “Please talk to me.”

She was sinking, drowning, weighed down by all the things she hadn’t told him; the moments in those six months after Bespin that she’d wanted desperately to just give up because the pain of living was too much, the way Jabba’s men had looked at her, _touched_ her as they’d shoved her into that metal contraption, the way she could still sometimes feel their hands on her skin.

And now, this. The knowledge that she was woven inextricably into this story in a way she’d never wanted, never asked for. The knowledge that the Force, which had corrupted Vader beyond repair, could just as easily corrupt her, corrupt _Luke_.

 _Luke,_ who was out there facing Vader alone, with no one to protect him from that darkness.

 _There’s still good in him,_ Luke had told her. _I’ve felt it._

But what if he was wrong?

( _“Balance.”_

_It was her father’s voice, that came to her. Not Vader, her real father, the one who had claimed her, loved her, raised her, despite what she was._

_“All things in the galaxy must have balance, Leia. The mountains have the sea. The winters have the summer. The night has the day. The darkness has the light. Where there is light, there must also be darkness. Don’t forget that.”)_

_He knew_ , she thought to herself. _He knew what I was and he never told me_. But she couldn’t find it in herself to resent him for it.

And if Luke was the light, what did that make her?

“Leia.”

She opened her eyes and immediately wished that she hadn’t. Because the way Han was looking at her was so sweet, so gentle, so _loving_ that she felt another piece of herself shatter because she didn’t deserve to have someone look at her this way. Especially when that someone had been tortured and nearly killed by her father.

 _One more night_ , she told herself. She would let herself fall asleep in the comfort of his arms for one more night, like a traitor, and tomorrow she would tell him, and she would face all of the consequences that came along with it.

She swallowed around the lump in the back of her throat. “Luke went to face Vader.” That much, she could tell him.

“Alone?”

She nodded.

He knew there was more, she could see it in his eyes, but he didn’t press her for what she wasn’t willing to give and she loved him for it. Instead, he told her, “If anyone can make it out of there alive, it’s Luke.”

“But this is _Vader_ , Han,” and her voice was shaking, and her hands were shaking in his grip, and the whole _world_ was shaking. And Leia, who typically found herself feeling suffocated in small spaces, who craved the vast expanse of the sky in a way she was never able to explain, felt herself needing something to contain her as the galaxy threatened to pull her apart from every angle, as if she was a thread being stretched thinner and thinner, threatening to snap.

She pressed herself into Han’s embrace once more and his arms came up to hold her; warm, solid, real. It was almost enough to keep the darkness at bay. The darkness, which she had come to realize, was Vader’s presence inside her, his shadow over her soul that she carried with her wherever she went.

She wondered if Luke felt it too. There were so many things she wished she’d had the time to ask him.

“Luke says there’s still good in him,” she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder. “He says he can _feel_ it.”

 _Why can’t I feel it too?,_ was the question she didn’t ask.

“Hey,” Han whispered against her hair, his hand pressing between her shoulder blades, pulling her closer to him. “I don’t know much about this Force stuff. I wish I knew less about it, to be honest. And if I was up there right now I’d be blowing that bastard’s head off without a second thought after what he did to us.”

It was such a _Han_ thing to say that Leia grinned into his shoulder despite her inner turmoil.

“But,” he continued, pulling back to look at her seriously, “we’re not up there. We’re down here. So we can do our part, and as for the rest of it, well…”

“We can hope,” she finished for him. It was a word she was intimately familiar with because it was the backbone of the Resistance and everything they’d been trying so hard to build despite the ever-present shadow cast over them by the Empire. It was the word that had kept her going on the Death Star, and on Hoth, and again on Bespin as she’d lost pieces of herself over and over and over until it felt like there was nothing left.

 _Rebellions are built on hope_ , someone had told her once.

“Yeah.” He answered her small smile with one of his own. “We’ll hope.”

They stood there in silence, holding each other as the dying embers of the campfires faded to ash around them. Finally, when the only light left was coming from the stars, Han gave her hand a gentle tug. “Come on. We should get some sleep.”

Their Ewok hosts had graciously granted them a treetop cabin, which seemed to be the standard form of accommodation on the forest moon of Endor. It was, however, slightly difficult to scramble up the precariously positioned ladder with only the light of the stars for guidance, and Leia breathed a sigh of relief once they both reached the top.

When they entered their cabin, they were immediately greeted by an ecstatic Chewie, who wasted no time in enthusiastically explaining the similarities between Endor and his home planet.

Han grinned, looping an arm around Leia’s waist. “We’ll have to take you to Kashyyyk when this is all over.”

Chewie rumbled in agreement, placing his own arm gently across Leia’s shoulders so she was sandwiched between the two of them. “I’d love to go,” she said sincerely, trying not to think about whether ‘when this is all over’ would be a moment they’d see in their lifetimes.

It was the first real promise they’d made to each other, the first time they’d said anything about a future together that hadn’t been _maybe_ or _what if_. It was something firm and solid, and it was that foundation, more than anything else, that provided the spark that would rekindle the flame of Leia’s hope. That that spark would come from _Han_ of all people, was a testament to how far they’d both come.

“What’s wrong?” Han brushed a thumb across her cheek gently and Leia realized she’d been staring at him.

She shook her head ever so slightly in an attempt to clear her thoughts. “Nothing, it’s just…you never stop surprising me, you know that?”

“I know,” he told her softly.

Two words were all it took for Leia’s entire body to go cold, as if she’d been immersed in ice water. She saw Han’s eyes darken as he realized what he’d just said, as he remembered the last time he’d told her those same words, the memory that was branded permanently into both of their minds.

He shook his head, slowly, as if to say _that’s not what I meant_. “Leia, I…”

“It’s okay,” she told him gently. Some things didn’t need to be spoken aloud for them to be true. She, of all people, could understand that.

“Is it?”

She considered the question for a moment before she answered, “It will be.”

“No.” Han was still shaking his head. “No, Leia, I should have told you _years_ ago, I should have-”

“ _Han_.” She placed a hand over his mouth to shut him up. “It’s okay. Just…come to bed. Please.”

He nodded slowly, following her to the small pallet in the corner that looked like it would barely fit the two of them, waiting until she slipped under the covers before tucking himself against her, an arm looped loosely around her waist. Han’s lips against the back of her neck were the last thing she felt before sleep took her.

_Darkness._

_She wandered down the unfamiliar hallway, trailing her fingers against the pristine white walls. She’d only ever seen two places this white, and this wasn’t Hoth._

_And then, all of a sudden, the scene changed, and electricity crackled in front of her like lightning, illuminating the shaking body in its midst, a body that was familiar, too familiar, but no, it couldn’t be…_

_She tried to scream his name but her voice stuck in her throat and she could do nothing but watch as her silent scream mingled with his cries of pain, until her eyes were so full of tears that she couldn’t make out his face._

_And then the scene changed again, and she stood on the ground, feeling the cold, wet dirt beneath her bare feet as a star exploded in the sky above her._

The scream tore its way from her throat like an animal.

“Leia.” His voice was low, urgent, his grip on her shoulder like a vice. “Leia, hey. I’m here, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

 _Not me_ , she wanted to tell him.

Her breath came in deep, panicked gasps, and she was dimly conscious of his hands on either side of her face, his forehead pressed against hers as he murmured her name over and over and over. She took another deep, shuddering breath as he reached up to brush the tears from her cheeks.

“What is it?” he asked her softly. “What did you see?”

Was it the past? The present? The future?

“The end,” she told him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alderaan is the canada of the star wars universe  
> (i scream into the void, come scream back)
> 
> [natrasharomanova.tumblr.com](http://natrasharomanova.tumblr.com/) / twitter [@hoboskywalker](https://twitter.com/hoboskywalker)


End file.
